These eight stories from James Lee Burke moves from the marshlands on the Gulf of Mexico to the sweeping plains of Colorado to prisons, saloons and trailer parks across the South, weaving together love, friendship, violence, survival and revenge. A boy and his father watch a German submarine sink an oil tanker as evil forces in the disguise of federal agents try to ruin their family. A girl is beaten up outside a bar as her university-professor father navigates new love and threats from a group of neo-Nazis. A pair of undercover union organizers are hired to break colts for a Hollywood actor, whose “Western hero” façade hides darkness. An oil rig worker witnesses a horrific attack on a local village while on a job in South America and seeks justice through one final act of bravery.

Kats Takemoto, the nisei private detective from HUNTERS POINT, returns to investigate the murder of a young Chinese girl, killed in a covert CIA brothel in the heart of San Francisco. Her family, members of a Tong, a powerful Chinatown gang, demand vengeance that threatens to start an all-out war in Chinatown unless Kats can discover the truth behind the slaying. Along the way, he will discover a personal connection to the suspected killer, a fellow veteran who was tortured and experimented on, turning him into a lethal weapon and a ticking bomb. Kats and his friends race to find this soldier before the government and the rival Tong gangs spiral into more bloodshed.