In the pre-Christmas cold and dark a young black woman is brutally murdered in New York City, the police have no idea what sort of instrument could have inflicted such awful wounds. Even worse, her murder is a carbon copy of an equally grisly one that took place only a few days earlier. Desperate to keep the news that they are dealing with a probably serial murderer away from the media, the NYPD brass call in one Detective Lieutenant John Vinda, rescuing him from the limbo of missing persons and a dead-end career by assigning him the task of apprehending this killer fast - his orders are to close the file no matter what the costs before the obvious psychopath kills again.