A cadre of powerful Massachusetts politicians offers Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro big money for a small job: find the missing cleaning woman who allegedly stole confidential Statehouse documents. But there's much more to this crime than anyone realizes. What the woman was really after was justice--and out on the Boston streets, the truth can turn stark and ugly. . .

This is it: the novel that introduces the newest sensation in detective fiction, Dennis Lehane, and a couple of gritty private investigators who grew up and grew tough in blue-collar Dorchester. Kenzie and Gennaro have opened their own agency from the belfry of a Boston church--and all manner of unholiness is crossing their threshold. Like it or not, they're headed for a deadly crossfire in a case that's not just about right and wrong--it's all-out war.