What do you do when your girlfriend is nearly run down by a speeding muscle car and the local police are helpless to catch the driver? What do you do when your favorite neighborhood dog, Rosco, one you've begun to think of as your own, is then hit and killed by the very same driver? Fifteen-year-old Ralph Turner is faced with some heavy choices as he races against time to catch a hit-and-run driver that has been terrorizing the town before he claims another victim, maybe even his own baby brother. Jacob Turner finally has his own group of friends. Gone are the days he pathetically chases after Ralph, his older brother, and his crowd. Two new kids, twin brothers, soon add to the fun and adventures Jacob is just beginning to have, but between the ever-present threat of a hit-and-run driver and a near fatal catastrophe with a rope swing that should never have been erected, life is never just business as usual for nine-year-old Jacob. But things really take a turn for the worse when Denny, one of Jacob's new friends, a boy with special needs, is the third victim of the dreaded and reckless hit-and-run driver.