Carrie White is a lonely and painfully shy teenage girl with telekinetic powers who is slowly pushed to the edge of insanity by frequent bullying from both her classmates and her domineering, religious mother.

African-American Philadelphia police detective Virgil Tibbs is arrested on suspicion of murder by Bill Gillespie, the racist police chief of tiny Sparta, Mississippi. After Tibbs proves not only his own innocence but that of another man, he joins forces with Gillespie to track down the real killer. Their investigation takes them through every social level of the town, with Tibbs making enemies as well as unlikely friends as he hunts for the truth.