Wade had hid the truth, obscuring his life with private trickery and leaving everyone in the dark. He had finessed his way into a position of influence, scaling the barrier that, more often than not, keeps the less mighty out. Faced with the challenge, Audrey launches an incursion to uncover the secrets that Wade had used to catapult himself from obscurity into the world of the powerful. What she discovers puts her in an ethical dilemma and in need of a Swamp Fox offensive.

In Tyranny Begins, heroine Audrey Durant unscrambles the covert life of Jeremy Wade, drawing on her fascination with South Carolina's colorful history and finding echoes and clues from the past in the realities and characters of the current-day case.