Leonid McGill knows something suspicious is going on as soon as the phone rings—no one calls him at this number. Alphonse Rinaldo, New York City’s ultimate fixer, the one man with a hand in every dark decision made in the five boroughs, has a problem that he needs McGill’s help to handle. What Rinaldo can’t accomplish on his own, McGill doesn’t really want to know. But Rinaldo’s not a client a Manhattan private eye can say no to, so McGill runs uptown to check on the young woman Rinaldo is worried about. McGill’s hardly pleased, but not especially surprised, when he walks into the middle of a murder scene—and, thanks to his nefarious past, winds up as the NYPD’s prime suspect.
Everyone’s motives are murky in McGill’s world; that, he’s used to. What he’s not quite accustomed to is his own recent commitment to the straight and narrow, a path that still seems to lead him directly to the city’s crookedest corners and down its darkest alleys. When Rinaldo won’t let McGill drop the case, or reveal his connection to the young woman in question—simply insisting that she must be found—McGill strikes a dangerous deal with himself: he’ll find the girl, but he’s not going to hand her over until he knows all there is to know about her, and why exactly Rinaldo’s so interested.
And so McGill plunges deep into contemporary New York City as only Walter Mosley can expose it, navigating an underworld that—just beneath the glitz and glamour, hidden behind the safe, clean streets—pulses with danger and violence. This is where McGill plies his trade, and it’s from this that he’s determined to protect all that he’s come to love: his family, his friends, his soul—all of which seem determined to put themselves in harm’s way. To achieve all of this, he’ll have to make new alliances with the darkest, most dangerous acquaintances of his past. And if he can survive both his friends and his enemies with his charm and charisma intact, Leonid McGill will truly have earned his designation as the twenty-first century’s iconic noir hero.