Evan Blade lives under an assumed name to hide a previous existence when he loved the wrong woman, trusted a partner, and killed an innocent man. He learned to work from shadows on the carnival circuits of his childhood. His stealth and skills serve him well as a private detective. Petra Isolta McIntyre, by the time she was six years old: had been kidnapped, sold on an underground baby market, had four different names, and witnessed three murders. Sheltered in obscure places by a valiant guardian, she returns to Capital City, Kentucky, after fifteen years, to find him near death in her kitchen. Evan inherits the guardianship of Petra, who, when he first learns the kid is a girl, describes her as "so sexless, she wouldn't attract a blind drunk in a dark bar." He juggles confetti-like fragments of information against time, to identify the deranged killer bent on eliminating every probable witness. Each direction Evan takes, point to an elected official, who is also his long-time employer with much to lose if Evan's digging unearths enough evidence to prove him guilty of murder. Can he find long buried answers to keep his promise to an old friend to protect Petra, especially when she ignores his efforts? Nash Black introduces a new private detective to the annals of crime fiction with the character, Evan Blade. Black steps back in time to 1979, to set the story against the background of a state capital, where politics and crime have long been bedfellows.