Spenser is hired out on a marital matter that entangles him with the mob. When Boston hoodlum, Julius Ventura, approaches Spenser about finding his daughter's missing husband, it's clear he's not telling them the whole truth, but Spenser nevertheless agrees to take the case.
Lisa St. Claire, the pretty young wife of a middle-aged cop, Frank Belson, has disappeared. When somebody takes a shot at Frank a few days later, he asks Spenser to find her. Spenser quickly discovers that she had a past and a different identity, in the L.A. underworld of drugs and sleaze.
Hired by the Port City Theatre Company's board to investivgate the director's claims that he is being followed, Spenser feels like a fish out of water. Then an actor is gunned down during a performance of a controversial play and Boston's premier private cop goes into action.
Hired by an aggrieved aristocrat who refuses to believe that his wife Olivia's brutal street-slaying was random violence, Spenser, the Boston private investigator, plunges into a world of grand illusion. No-one is what they seem.
When Spenser's cohort, Hawk, is hired by the tenants of a rundown block known as Double Deuce, Spenser is roped in to help. But before they can start the clean-up, Spenser must take on a feared band of teenage urban warriors.
