The Sixth Commandment takes place in T Coburn, a fictitious small town in upstate New York that is hemorrhaging jobs, money, and young people to other locales with more interesting or rewarding prospects. The continued, if marginal, survival of the town, and everyone in it, hangs on the fate of Crittendon Hall and its scientific laboratories, owned and operated by the gifted and driven Dr.

Telford Thorndecker. The fate of Crittendon Hall depends on the successful receipt of a grant from the Bingham Foundation, for which the protagonist, Samuel Todd, is an investigator. Thorndecker, a Nobel Prize winner, believes he is close to unlocking and controlling the secrets of the aging process.

Arriving in Coburn on a desolate, grey day (there do not seem to be any other kind in Coburn), Sam Todd finds a message waiting for him: "Thorndecker kills."

He takes this message with...