Lupe Garcia, a "cowboy" cop with a wild reputation, and Lamont Yarborough, an itinerant musician and acknowledged killer, clash as they investigate the murders of a series of seemingly unrelated women

Lupe Garcia doesn't really plan to kill the young thug who is terrorizing his friend Danny Kelly, even though the Detroit cop lets Kelly believe he will. Garcia, the Hispanic homicide detective readers met in The Cheerio Killings, owes Danny. Kelly is dying of cancer and desperately needs money to leave for the care of a brain-damaged son. Unwisely, he believed that taking Richie Zeayen as a partner in his nightclub would repair his finances. Now Zeayen is threatening him viciously; he wants it all. Lupe - "Loop" to his colleagues - has his own troubles. Sickened when he failed to prevent a gang-related explosion that killed several people, he tried to resign from the force, but his superiors insisted he take time off and "think it over." He takes Dan's "job," convinced he can find a way to bring down Zeayen without murdering him. But it's Lupe who is almost brought down when events land him in jail on a murder charge. Fighting that on one side, Zeayen's gang on another, and a thoroughly evil drug dealer on the third, survival becomes the priority. Allyn creates a heady mix of crime, music, and the complicated moral dilemmas faced by a cop in urban Detroit, and brings it all to his readers with pulsating drive and drama.