Detroit of World War II - the anguish of war, hot jazz, racial tension, and a fanatical killer. A tough town in a tough time - Detroit during World War II was where the United States' furious effort to out-manufacture the Germans and Japanese occured. Industry imported workers to replace men gone to war - Southern whites and blacks working side by side for the first time. Detroit had it all: rationing, the black market, the Mafia, fortunes to be made; a new kind of jazz for seething summer nights - a powder keg. Through this tense, troubled world cuts a killer, a self-appointed soldier savaging ordinary people, the defenseless. Lieutenant Zagreb's most important job is to keep the city from expoding, then to catch a mad killer with a cop roster of 4-Fs and near retirees, and, finally, he has to save his own soul. He cannot succeed at all three.