Mosley and his new hero return, in a series that's already being hailed as a classic of contemporary noir.

A mystery caller sends Leonid McGill to an uptown address 'just to check a girl's OK'. There's no explanation -- just a name, Angelique -- a reward, and the chilling knowledge that he's working for Rinaldo Alphonse, the most feared man in New York. What LT finds is a crime scene. A girl lies with her face blown off, her assassin felled by a knife.

But the dead girl isn't the one LT was sent to find, and her killer's injuries don't make sense. The next day Alphonse comes calling: LT must find Angelique before the assassin's assassin tracks her down. Alphonse isn't the only one who wants a bit of LT's time -- the NYPD, finding his appearance too convenient, think they can finally put away the thorn in their side. But why do so many people want a piece of the apparently normal, clean-living Angelique? And why is the mafia coming after McGill, linking his sons -- shy Dmitri and streetwise Twill -- to the escape of a sex-trafficked Belarussian girl?

As both plots career towards a thrilling finale, McGill must put his street know-how and book of lethal contacts to the test, while haunted by the reappearance of a face from his crooked past and his wife Katrina's continued infidelities.