Byrne and Susan Hollander stroll home from a concert on a fine summer's evening in New York. Some hours later, their daughter Kristin arrives home to discover her parents brutally killed and the house ransacked. She also finds she is now a very young millionaire. A few days later the police trace the two killers to an apartment in Coney Island and both are dead. One killed the other before turning the gun on himself. At least that's the way it looks. So that's that. Another case solved. But for Matt Scudder it's only the beginning. The more he looks into it, the more things look wrong to him. There's a murderer out there, and he's just getting started. Pitted in a deadly game of cat and mouse, Scudder is up against the most resourceful and diabolical killer of his career.