“General” Jackson didn’t look to Carney Wilde like a man who could afford a private detective, but he had the kind of face you don’t see very often, the kind of face you want to help. So Detective Wilde agreed to help Jackson in the case of the missing preacher, Matthew Kimball, whose trail led to strange places—from the shabby mission in the waterfront section known as The Bend, all the way to the city's most exclusive suburb, where rich, eccentric Mrs. Prentice had built a church—The Church of Shining Light—for Matthew Kimball, ex-tire salesman. As he followed the elusive trail of the missing preacher, Carney Wilde began to learn what sort of man Matthew Kimball was. Some people hated and feared him, as did Mr. Winocur, who claimed his church was “a rich people’s church” where they held “black masses.” Lovely Alicia Prentice “wasn’t sure” about Kimball. Her brother, Colonel Alec, didn’t want to talk about him—or anything else. Dr. Decies, senior elder of the church was a “fanatic,” people said. Kimball’s young protégé, Gerald Dodge, wanted no investigation—at first. And though Mrs. Kimball wept over her husband’s disappearance, her eyes were restless and frightened. But “General” Jackson believed in Matthew Kimball, said he was a “good man.” That belief cost him his life. Three people were to die before Carney Wilde had the dark answer to the disappearance of the preacher of The Church of Shining Light.