Just another day in downtown Washington DC? Private Investigator Derek Strange and his partner, Terry Quinn, are running a PI business in the seedy underbelly of Washington DC. Strange and Quinn are approached by a young man asking them to find his girlfriend who has gone missing. And so Strange and Quinn find her. Just another day? Not quite. In the grimy underworld inhabited by Strange, nothing is that simple. For Strange and Quinn's efforts have...

This novel, a prequel to the later books featuring Derek Strange, begins by telling the story of how Derek came to be a rookie cop. It then focuses on the years before and during the 1968 riots sparked by the death of Martin Luther King Jr. and how Derek, as an African American cop, is considered an enemy by other members of his community.