Hired killers, sent one by one to Montana Territory after Page Murdock. Murdock doesn't know why someone wants him out of the way, but he knows where they're coming from. Thus begins Murdock's descent into a hell more decadent, corrupt, and dangerous than even he has ever seen—-San Francisco's Barbary Coast. With an unwilling backup man, Murdock takes up temporary residence among the whores, gamblers, dope addicts, and cutthroats of the continent's foulest district. No man here is trustworthy. The enemies he's really worried about, though, are the men who run things, the politicians. Murdock's quest also takes him into Chinatown, into opium dens, and into league with a man of an alien culture who controls vices that make respectable people quail. But perhaps the men who seem respectable are the most insidious of all. Loren D. Estleman's latest tale of Page Murdock takes the deputy to the federal marshal into danger and evil appalling even for him, and delivers excitement and satisfaction as only Estleman can.