The hooker was young, pretty...and dead, butchered in a Greenwich village apartment. The prime suspects, a minister's son, was also dead, the victim of a jailhouse suicide. The case is closed, as far as the NYPD is concerned. Now the murdered prostitute's father wants it opened again...and that's where Matthew Scudder comes in. But this assignmnet carries the unmistakable stench of sleaze and perversion, luring Scudder into a sordid world of phony religion and murderous lust, where children must die for their parent's most secret, unspeakable sins.

Alex McKnight has a souvenir from his days as a cop- a bullet lodged too near his heart to be removed. He also has a guilty conscience about the death of his partner in that same shooting, and now he is left alone in his spartan log cabin, taking his meals at the nearby roadhouse, finding company there when he wants it. But when a young native American woman comes to hin for help, McKnight feels bound to protect her. He ensconces her in an unoccupied cabin- and finds her gone the next morning. Convinced that her ex-lover has kidnapped her, he begins a frantic search that leads to some extremely unpleasant discoveries as he learns that criminal sadism knows no bounds...

Dr Emil Euler Ganz was considered a pre-eminent astrophysicist, a world-renowned professor with a brilliant reputation.Then, without warning to his family or colleagues, he vanished. For ten years, no one knew of his whereabouts until he suddenly reappeared as 'Father Jupiter', the founder of a pseudo-scientific cult- the Order of the Rings of God. For fifteen years, Ganz ruled his hundreds of disciples with spiritual words and an iron fist. Now, the aging and charismatic leader has been found dead, a fifth of vodka and a phial of pills by his beadside. LAPD Lieutenant Peter Decker and his team of homicide detectives pose official questions. Is Ganz's death an accident, a suicide...or homicide?