Hank Tower’s case starts with a man crushed under a ton of iron with a strange diagram drawn on the sole of his shoe. Tower, a former spy turned New York PI, is asked by the NYPD to help find what’s behind the mark and the murder. He learns that the drawing is the sign of a cult and the killing is the result of money lent to it. The lender wants it back before his mistake makes him look weak; the cult leader wants to keep it to expand his cult. The standoff results in a tit-for-tat game of murder with Tower and his two associates caught in the middle.
The dangers are numerous. There’s a cult member who kills with a sniper rifle that’s deadly at half of a mile, a hitman named Hog who has murdered dozens, a terrifying kidnapping, a makeshift temple with a device for hanging people, a disgraced Army officer now number two in the cult, a restaurant with three murders at its entrance, a suave, dangerous client who lies to Tower why he wants to hire him, a beautiful woman client looking for revenge against the cult who wants Tower sexually, a deranged woman with a shotgun, a spellbinding, amoral cult leader, two powerful men hellbent on defeating each other and keeping score on their murders along the way.
Tower’s mission is to stop the cult from spreading and ending the war before more people are killed.
And staying alive in the process.