Gunned down in the street in an apparent mugging, author Helmut Brandt is at the center of a mystery with many layers. P.I. Marco Fontana is offered the case by Brandt's partner who suspects that it was a premeditated attack. Brandt's work on the death of Pope John Paul I angered people in and out of the Church and made him a number of enemies. His death occurs soon after Brandt claims to have evidence implicating people never before suspected in the Pope's death and suggesting a wider conspiracy. Fontana is not a believer in coincidences and decides to take the case. A lapsed Catholic himself, he knows that uncovering Brandt's killer means more than exposing a decades old plot to kill the Pope. It would spell ruin for those named in the documents Brandt claimed to have. He realizes also that these same people, having killed such a highly placed target, will not hesitate to kill a P.I. determined to learn the truth. Entering the lofty and secretive world of the Catholic Church, Fontana encounters forces bound on keeping him from the truth. Fontana manages to penetrate the upper levels of Philadelphia's Catholic hierarchy but realizes that the web of power and deceit is every bit as intricate, tangled, and deadly as he imagined it might be. As the owner of StripGuyz, a troupe of male strippers he runs to help pay the bills, Fontana is familiar with the byways of Philly's gayborhood as well as the seamier parts of Philadelphia's gay underworld. But in this case, he finds that there is an even darker side to life in the City of Brotherly Love.