A major stand alone thriller from the author of the acclaimed Matt Scudder books. One of the premier crime writers of our time delivers a mesmerising thriller about the effects of a tragedy on a disparate group of New Yorkers whose lives begin to intersect. A beautiful young woman called Marilyn picks up a stranger in a bar and takes him home to her Manhattan apartment. The next morning her housekeeper arrives unwittingly cleans the entire crime scene then enters the bedroom to wake his client to discover her strangled body. Marilyn s life and death have far reaching effects on others even people she has never met a charismatic former police commissioner on the verge of a breakdown; a struggling writer on the verge of a breakthrough; a folk art dealer plumbing the depths of her own fierce sexuality; a lawyer who prefers murder trials because there s one less witness; and in the shadows of a city reeling from 9/11 an unlikely mass murderer waging a one man war against everyone.