1979. Atlantis, New Jersey. A deadly international sex trafficking cartel has little to fear from a local teacher who arms his young charges with pens in a world full of swords. Beset by intimate betrayal, violent death, and the collapse of all he holds sacred, Mr. Bachman is on the verge of losing everything. ...There was a flow to all the things that were happening to him and around him. He didn't know where it started, and he didn't know where it would lead, but it didn't seem too dramatic to think that maybe it came from Hell, and maybe it was leading someplace really bad. This afternoon... he would take his first crippled step on a road down which he was being drawn forward, on a voyage over which he had no control. When this school day was over, he had an appointment with Detective Dick Raumbaugh of the Atlantis Police Department. If I weren't me, Bachman thought, I'd suspect me. Of something. Four years before the devastating events of HEARTLESS CRUELTY - the first book in the highly praised MR. BACHMAN SERIES - a younger, greener, newlywed William Bachman, untested by the real world and unprepared for what lies ahead, optimistically begins a new school year. The fate that awaits will either toughen him up in a hurry, or crush him.