In the Spring of 2009 at the height of the fallout from the Financial Crisis, New York media baron Alan Medussa is engaged in many conflicts as he attempts to hold together his crumbling empire. There's the rap star Li’l Sheanna who's going down the drain but won't accept his offer to end their contract. There's his long-time associate and college buddy Boris Rochshire of Wall Street fame, now charged with engineering a multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme and looking to take Alan down with him. There's the Department of Transportation Commissioner Laurence Welsh, now looking to return to the private sector, attempting to take advantage of Alan's declining health to acquire his businesses on the cheap. And then there's the baseball star Roberto Granada, whom Alan hotly pursued to aid his hapless New York Comets. His star player now defies him by becoming romantically involved with his niece Anne. All this as the rise of new media technologies fragments his audiences and breaks his businesses apart.

After a hair-raising cab ride in which Alan encounters a driver desperately down on his luck and in trouble with criminal gangs, he concocts an innovative way to use the services of taxis and their drivers to resolve his conflicts.

What transpires is a blistering summer of reckless crimes, a baseball pennant race and internet-fueled tabloid journalism that grips the city in a pervasive fear. Alan uses all means of motivation; financial rewards, ego-enrichment and coercion to execute his devious plans while the health of his mind and body continues to decay. Can he defeat his enemies and succeed in his plans or will he degenerate into a modern day media Frankenstein?