Two years after the death of Tim Hess, her partner and father of her child, Merci Rayborn, the Orange County homicide investigator introduced in Parker's "insanely imaginative" (New York Times Book Review) The Blue Hour, is back. Merci has finally pulled her life back together. She and her son are living with her father, a retired cop, and she is dating Mike McNally, a respected fellow officer. When a young prostitute is found murdered and Mike emerges as the primary suspect, Merci must do the unthinkable - expose and arrest her lover. With her world turned upside down, Merci must sift through the facts and balance where the truth leads her against where her heart is telling her to go. But the truth is taking her down some very strange alleyways; from present-day Orange County to late sixties California, and the unsolved murder of another prostitute. This taut, psychologically complex thriller brings Jefferson Parker and his daring heroine, Merci Rayborn, into the front ranks of this popular genre.