As a favor to a friend, Boston P.I. John Francis Cuddy is looking into the case of Alan Spaeth -- a racist, a misogynist, and a suspected cold-blooded killer. But as much as he's repulsed by the accused, Cuddy's convinced of Spaeth's innocence; he's also intrigued by the victim, Woodrow Wilson Gant, the African-American lawyer who had been representing Spaeth's wife in a very nasty divorce. Three quick bullets on a deserted roadside knocked Gant's rising star out of the Boston skyline for good, and now Cuddy's discovered the attorney was a man of strange desires -- and deadly secrets.
Ricocheting from Gant's law offices, Cuddy picks up the trail of a woman who fled the scene of the murder and stumbles on a more personal question. The mere mention of Gant's name puts a cold, hard kink in his relationship with Assistant D.A. Nancy Meagher, and Cuddy's losing sleep wondering why. With greed, revenge, and jealousy just a few of the motives in Gant's high-profile homicide, it's up to Cuddy to explore the raw passion -- and touch every nerve -- of a city on the edge.
