Set during the spring and summer of 1980 - starting on Saturday, May 17- the novel describes the events that seize the affluent suburban town of Hampstead, Connecticut, located in the fictional Patchin County [modeled after Fairfield County, where the author resided at the time]. It all starts when local housewife Susan "Stony" Friedgood is brutally murdered in her own bedroom by a mysterious man she picks up in a bar that Saturday afternoon. Simultaneously, her husband, Leo, is involved in an accident at a chemical plant while working on a shady project for the Department of Defense, which releases an apparently sentient cloud of nerve gas called DRG-16 upon the area.