It is 1871. A prominent New York attorney must go to a private investigator named Harp to find his missing young wife. She has vanished into the teeming underworld of crime and corruption beneath the city's respectable surface - realm of sin and savagery that Harp knows better than any other man. But even Harp is shocked at what he discovers when he stumbles over the corpse of a slain prostitute. Only one thing is sure in this labyrinth of lust and lies, where the best people do the worst things, and money can buy anything from a woman's body to a killer's skill. A monstrous murderer is loose in Manhattan - and to catch him the kid gloves must come off . . .