Rushmore McKenzie, former St. Paul police detective and unexpected millionaire, does the occasional, unofficial private detective work-mostly favors for friends. He’s faced kidnappers, domestic terrorists, art thieves, among others, and had a hand in solving some of the most perplexing mysteries of the Twin Cities. But this time, his prodigious luck and intuition may have finally failed him: He was shot in the back by an unknown assailant and lies in a coma.

His childhood friend, Lt. Bobby Dunston of the St. Paul Police Department, assigns his best detective to the case while other figures-on both sides of the law-pursue the truth. What was he investigating, what did he learn that so threatened someone that they tried to kill him? What do a sketchy bar in the wrong part of town, the area’s prominent tech millionaire family, drug dealers, investment bankers, and a mysterious woman who left an unknown package for McKenzie all have in common? And the answer to that might be what stands between life and death.