After an overhaul of leadership at the FBI's New York
field office, A. X. L. Pendergast is abruptly forced to accept an
unthinkable condition of continued employment: the famously rogue agent
must now work with a partner.
Pendergast and his new colleague,
junior agent Coldmoon, are assigned to investigate a rash of killings in
Miami Beach, where a bloodthirsty psychopath is cutting out the hearts
of his victims and leaving them with cryptic handwritten letters at
local gravestones. The graves are unconnected save in one bizarre way:
all belong to women who committed suicide.
But the seeming lack of
connection between the old suicides and the new murders is soon the
least of Pendergast's worries. Because as he digs deeper, he realizes
the brutal new crimes may be just the tip of the iceberg: a conspiracy
of death that reaches back decades.