Graham Gage is battling cancer, but must delay treatment in order to repay the woman who saved his life in San Francisco's Chinatown 30 years earlier. She has come out of hiding after her troubled teenage son was ensnared and killed in a multimillion-dollar microchip robbery executed by the United Bamboo Triad. Gage heads to Asia to untangle a brilliantly orchestrated deal bartering the chips for a billion dollars of China White heroin. In attempting to tie the conspiracy directly to the US-based godfather behind her son's death, Gage is soon drawn into a deadly confrontation with the godfather himself.

Twenty years ago, Judge Ray McMullin sentenced Israel Dominguez to death for a gangland murder. But it meant suppressing his own doubts about whether the punishment really did fit the crime. As the execution date nears, the conscience-wracked judge confesses his unease to former homicide detective Harlan Donnally, who is forced to question not only whether the penalty was undeserved, but the conviction itself.

Is criminal defense attorney Mark Hamlin the victim of murder --- or of a dangerous sexual encounter gone wrong? Former detective Harlan Donnally had no desire to immerse himself in the deceit that was Hamlin's career...nor entangle himself in the corrupted loyalties that turned the dead lawyer's associates into both co-conspirators and suspects. But the presiding judge demanded otherwise --- and that might cost Donnally his life.

When private investigator Graham Gage receives a phone call from a dying man named Charlie Palmer --- a specialist in concealing the crimes of political and financial elites --- he takes on a case revolving around the misdoings of a dishonest presidential candidate and his shrewd brother, a federal judge. As Gage proceeds with his inquiry, he finds himself embroiled in a web of murder, money-laundering and corrupted justice that not only puts Gage's life in danger, but also threatens the future of American democracy.

This is the first book in a thrilling series featuring a compelling new hero, former San Francisco homicide detective Harlan Donnally, who is plunged into a deadly morass of murder, sex trafficking and church corruption.