Returning from William D. Pease's first novel, the much acclaimed Playing the Dozens, Eddie Nickles has just retired after twenty-five years as a Washington, D.C., homicide detective. He doesn't intend to do any freelance work, but when a mysterious businessman comes to his door offering Nickles a lot of money to find the street person who may have been responsible for a double murder in D.C., Eddie accepts the job. He is too good at it, and it almost costs him his life and that of his eighteen-year-old daughter. Now he finds himself enmeshed with Russian free market mafiosi, ex-KGBers also on the take, street rappers, and a U.S. agency that doesn't exist. A local incident becomes an international chase, with Nickles playing David to the Goliaths who are seeking supremacy in the new world order.