Maxwell Carter ¿ a fingerprint analyst at the criminal justice facility in Clarksburg, West Virginia ¿ was supplementing his income by running a very simple scam whereby positive fingerprint matches in old crimes could be conveniently ¿ignored¿ in return for a small retainer. But then he caught a shark in his net ¿ one that did not take too kindly to blackmail. Maxwell¿s illicit career ¿ and his life ¿ were swiftly and brutally ended¿ When Johnny Harrison is called in to investigate Maxwell¿s grisly murder he quickly unearths a connection to an old child-murder in the bayous of Louisiana and the close-knit fishing community that work the Mississippi. Deciding to go undercover on one of the old trawlers, he digs into this alien world and starts to realise that he has stumbled on to something both sordid and enormously powerful, something that dates back 100 years into New Orleans¿s troubled history but could blow up Louisiana¿s present¿