Matthew Scudder investigates a secret, private club in Manhattan whose members suddenly start dying, when it becomes obvious that someone is trying to kill them all.

Matthew Scudder knows that justice is an elusive commodity in the big city, where a harmless man can be shot dead in a public place criminals fly free through holes in a tattered legal system.

Matt Scudder is finally leading a comfortable life. The crime rate's down and the stock market's up. Gentrification's prettying-up the old neighborhood. The New York streets don't look so mean anymore. Then all hell breaks loose.

There's something drawing Matthew Scudder to a case that the cops have quickly and eagerly closed: a nagging suspicion that a third man is involved, a cold, diabolical puppet master who manipulates his two accomplices, then cuts their strings when he's done with them.

A brilliant, savage, patient monster has unfinished business in the big city...and a hunger that can be satisfied only by fear and the slow, agonizing death of Matthew Scudder and the woman he loves.

Facing his demons in his first year of sobriety, Matthew Scudder finds himself on the trail of a killer.

Matthew Scudder has appeared in shorter fiction, and all 11 novelettes, short stories, and vignettes are here in a single rich volume.