Max Mingus wanted to turn down the case—fifteen million bucks on the table or not. The boy was dead, Max was sure of it. Three years had passed since Haitian billionaire Allain Carver’s five-year-old son was abducted. Why bother now? The huge bounty and the resources of the most powerful white family in Haiti hadn’t turned up a lead. Sure, Max had been the best detective in Miami once. But that was eight years back. Before he served time for killing a pair of junkie child-murderers. Before his wife, Sandra, died. Plus, he’d heard what had happened to the other PI’s sent to Haiti before him—all dead, or their lives permanently screwed up, without ever getting close to finding Charlie Carver. But with nothing left to lose—and for all that money—Max does go down there. The talk of voodoo and black magic is nothing compared to the haunting quiet of his own empty house. What Max doesn’t count on is the depth of corruption, manipulation, and greed Haiti breeds in its inhabitants, a murky evil worse than death, which can easily swallow a man whole—especially a troubled man like Max Mingus. When the trail to Charlie Carver points to a local myth—“Mr. Clarinet,” a spirit figure who for decades is said to have been tempting children away from their families—could the truth be even more shocking than the legend? Max’s job suddenly isn’t all about finding the boy, his killers, or the money—it’s about just staying alive…

Miami, 1981. When Detective Max Mingus and his partner Joe are called to the scene of a death at Miami's Primate Park, it looks like another routine - if slightly bizarre - investigation. Until two things turn up: the victim's family, slaughtered; and a partly digested tarot card in the dead man's stomach. "The King of Swords" - an increasingly bloody trail leads Max and Joe first to a sinister fortune-teller and her scheming pimp son, then to the infamous Solomon Boukman. Few have ever met the most feared criminal in Miami, but rumours abound of a forked tongue, voodoo ceremonies and friends in very high places. Against a backdrop of black magic and police corruption, Max and Joe must distinguish the good guys from the bad - and track down some answers. What is the significance of the "King of Swords"? What makes those who have swallowed the card go on a killing spree just before they die? And can Max find out the truth about Solomon Boukman, before death's shadow reaches his own front door ...

Meet the man with the voodoo eyes: Solomon Boukman. He'd used voodoo, black magic, and extreme violence to control his people, and to keep anyone who ever heard his name in a state of fear. He'd zombified his enemies with potions and hypnosis and used them as his very own suicide killers. Some said he was the earthly incarnation of Baron Samedi, the voodoo god of death; others said he was The Devil incarnate...Meet his nemesis: For private eye Max Mingus, Boukman has been the cause of unthinkable personal tragedy and professional torment. And when he uncovers a labyrinthine web of death and deceit stretching from the Miami jetset to sinister Cuban slums, the voodoo eyes of Boukman are never far from his mind. But how can Mingus stop him without losing his life, and the lives of those he loves? Meet a thriller that will haunt your dreams.