A 400-acre compound surrounded by ten-foot razor-wire fences pops up in southwest Austin, Texas. Neighbors along Hamilton's Pool Road ask Lt. Craig Rylander and the detectives under his command at the Austin Police Department to investigate. Who are these 300 people in white robes living in what appear to be newly-built crude barracks? And why are they digging graves and building rough wooden coffins? A simple inquiry by Craig and Detectives Tom Sellers and Gady Esparza soon mushrooms into kidnapping, murder, and an international manhunt that takes Craig's team to the far reaches of the Caribbean, off the cost of Venezuela. Tragedy of the Commons, the eighth Craig Rylander mystery, finds the Czarists, international assassination ring Craig thought his team had put out of business three years before, alive and well in Aruba and Curacao, Dutch islands where the Austin compound was born.