Pendergast - the world's most enigmatic FBI Special Agent - returns to New York City to investigate a murderous cult.

William Smithback Jr., a prominent New York Times reporter, was killed in a brutal attack in his Upper West Side apartment. His wife, Nora Kelly, an archaeologist at the Museum of Natural History, was injured as well. Multiple eyewitnesses identified the assailant as a neighbor in the building, Colin Fearing: a man who, by all reports, was dead and buried ten days ago.

While Captain Laura Hayward leads the official investigation, Pendergast and Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta undertake their own private—and decidedly unorthodox—quest for the truth. Their serpentine journey takes them to an enclave of Manhattan they never imagined could exist: a secretive, reclusive cult of Obeah and voodoo which no outsiders have ever survived.