In the summer of 1906, a distinguished member of one of New York's most prestigious and powerful men's clubs - the Metropolitan Club - is found with his throat slashed, murdered within the club's own walls. By all eyewitness accounts, the murderer is another member - a man who in actuality wasn't there that night, who was in fact across town in plain view of a hundred witnesses who can attest to his innocence.

For J. P. Morgan, founding member of the Metropolitan Club, there is only one man who can be entrusted with the swift and proper resolution of this impossible crime - his one-time nemesis, Sheriff John Le Brun of Jekyl Island, Georgia. Le Brun, rough-hewn but brilliant, is lured to New York City by both the puzzle of the crime and his curiosity about the metropolis itself.

Thrust into the midst of Manhattan's social and intellectual elite - which includes actor William Gillette, newspaperman Joseph Pulitzer, architect Sanford White, and financial colossus J. P. Morgan himself - Le Brun finds himself in a deadly struggle and race against time with an unseen foe, one whose mind is perhaps as nimble as his own.