A thirteen-year-old boy bludgeons a man to death in an abandoned building. A vanload of migrants is delivered to sex traffickers in a deserted Las Vegas suburb. A superyacht moors off Malibu in the glare of a massive wildfire as a passenger drowns. A biker gang is massacred in the northern California wilderness. A blind man staggers to an agonizing death in the Nevada desert—all savage milestones in the life and career of Tom Bridger, ex-cop, private investigator, killer. Told in two interlocking narratives, The Skeleton Palms follows Bridger from his brutal childhood and youth in a spectacularly lawless California mountain town, to the palatial homes of the super-rich in Palm Springs and Los Angeles where he becomes the target, and nemesis, of a vast conspiracy.