Famed reporter Russell Blaze is dead. It may have been an accident, but then again, it may have been murder. Russ' son Cody finds Russ's unfinished memoir for clues as to what may have happened. The opening words are: On the night of October 16, 1968, I uttered a sentence that would haunt me for the rest of my life. The sentence was, "Someone should kill that motherf***er.As Cody delves into the memoir, a window opens into a tragic past and thrusts the still-burning embers of another time's radical violence into the political reality of the present. History that once seemed far away becomes a deeply personal immersion for Cody into the storied heyday of Haight-Ashbury: drugs, sex, war protesters, right-wing militias, ground-breaking journalism-and the mysterious Gloria, who wanders into Russ' pad one day just to "crash here for a while until things calm down."Cody discovers aspects of his father's life he never knew, and slowly begins to understand the significance of those words his father spoke in 1968.Words Kill is a story of loss, violence, and racism; love, hate, and discovery. It is a story of then . . . and now.