Arresting a Blanton was always going to be bad news, but things are about to get even worse for Sheriff Milt Kovak.

Everyone in Prophesy County knows that you don't mess with the dim-witted, in-bred Blantons. So when Milt gets a call to say that Darrell Blanton has shot dead his wife, he's expecting a rough ride.

Arresting Darrell and putting him in the slammer may have been surprisingly easy, but things are about to get a whole lot worse. Eunice Blanton, Darrell's mama, takes a dim view of her son's arrest and decides to storm the Longbranch Inn where Milt's partner, Jean McDonnell is hosting a bachelorette party for Holly Humphries. With the women taken hostage, Eunice's terms are - unsurprisingly - simple: release her boy or a hostage gets shot every ten minutes. But there's a problem: Darrell has been found dead in his cell, with not a mark on him . . .