A heavy set, thirty-year-old Mexican named Carlos Mendoza crosses the border illegally and travels to Elam's Crossing in Washington State's Palouse country, arriving when his cousin, Ramiro Sanchez is planning a burglary. The crafty Sanchez convinces two harvest coworkers and roommates to take part. Although Sanchez grew up in Mexico with Mendoza, he knows nothing of his cousin's adult past: pimp and drug dealer, enforcer, hit man, and guerilla fighter in Guatemala. At the last minute, he secretly invites Mendoza to the farmhouse he and his buddies plan to burglarize. Things go horribly wrong that morning. Nothing turns out like the three harvest workers had planned. And Mendoza whines that it was not worth his trouble. Raised on a ranch in Colorado, the single, disarmingly attractive police detective, Brenda Tower, possess the grit and the experience for homicide that keeps her name at the top of Chief Lowery's duty roster. Finally able to break away for a vacation, Brenda is traveling with a friend to Lake Coeur d'Alene when she makes a discovery. Intrigued by the circumstances surrounding the wheat field murder of prominent farmer, Art Sabin, the tenacious and self confident Brenda makes a nuisance of herself at the crime scene. Her suspicion that someone has abducted a boy from the pickup where she found his grandfather, prompts Brenda to abandon her vacation and stay to assist the sheriff with his case. With his help, they find evidence on the ground supporting her theory. Tall, broad shouldered, forty year old, Lin Stone turned in his police badge in St. Louis, Missouri, seeking calmer pastures following the breakup of his marriage six year earlier. As the sheriff' of small Columbia County, Washington, (one town and one village), his force lacks homicide experience. Stone also knows Deputy Hardesty will never let him live it down if he lets the big city detective go. Stone accepts Tower's offer to stay and help. What Stone and his gung ho volunteer detective find in the hours and days that follow change everything. The twists and turns as they identify suspects and track responsibility for the mayhem and murder are like the twists and turns of the nearby Snake River. After spending time in the arms of the sheriff, the vulnerable Brenda, badly hurt in the recent past, considers breaking her hard and fast rule of dating no one she could possibly fall in love with. Revenge is a powerful human trait that can drive men, and women alike, to behave in ways that are incomprehensible to the rest of us who are untarnished by vengeful hearts. This is especially true when the wrong committed against someone takes place years, even decades ago. Revenge is at the root of the mystery in A Bend in the Snake.