A hot new novel from three-time Shamus Award nominee, and two-time Derringer Award winner Richard Helms! Pat Gallegher's back—in trouble, that is. After witnessing the execution of his friend Hotshot Spano at the hands of a gang of teenaged Haitian thugs, Gallegher is recruited by Lucho Braga, the head of the New Orleans mob, to help find the killers. Gallegher has his own problems, though, in the form of a ten-year-old girl he has found scrounging for food in the garbage behind Holliday's. She carries a deadly secret. Her stepfather, Jimmy Binh, is a powerful member of the Vietnamese gangs in the city, and she saw him kill a young prostitute out in the Atchafalaya bayous. Gallegher discovers a startling connection between Binh and the murder of Hotshot Spano—a link that could spell an all-out war in the French Quarter underworld! It's cool jazz and hot action, as Gallegher tries to protect Binh's stepdaughter, find Spano's killers, and deal with a brewing romance with Merlie Comineau, the director of the local runaway shelter, all as he desperately struggles not to become the next victim of Jimmy Binh's ambition rampage!