"Until her paper, the Baltimore Star, crashed and burned, Tess Monaghan was a damn good reporter who knew her hometown intimately from historic Fort McHenry to the crumbling projects of Cherry Hill. Now gainfully unemployed at twenty-nine, she's willing to take any freelance job to pay the rent including a bit of unorthodox snooping for her rowing buddy, Darryl 'Rock' Paxton."--Page 4 of cover.

Tess Monaghan has finally made the move and hung out her shingle as a p.i.-for-hire, complete with an office in Butchers Hill. Maybe it's not the best address in Baltimore, but you gotta start somewhere, and Tess's greyhound Esskay has no trouble taking marathon naps anywhere there's a roof. Then in walks Luther Beale, the notorious vigilante who five years ago shot a boy for vandalizing his car. Just out of prison, he says he wants to make reparations...

When a convicted murderer is himself murdered in prison, the sister of the dead prisoner seeks out Tess Monaghan to unravel the identity of the woman her brother killed.

Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Laura Lippman's Tess Monaghan-first introduced in the classic Baltimore Blues-becomes involved in a complicated investigation that will force her to question her loyalties. For Tess Monaghan, the unsolved murder of a young federal prosecutor is nothing more than a theoretical problem, one of several cases to be deconstructed in her new gig as a consultant to the local newspaper. But it becomes all...