War photographer Hugo Fitzduane discovers a stranger's body hanging from a tree on his own property. The boy is identified as a local student, an apparent suicide. But when the body of a terrorist is found with the same strange tattoo that marked the hanged boy, Fitzduane tries to uncover the truth. One man is responsible for these atrocities. A man so cruel, so sadistic, so *brilliant*, that his mastery of death spans the world. . . they call him the Hangman. And his game has just begun.