Joshua Oates is back! It is 1921 and private investigator Joshua Oates moves his operations from Boston to New York City. He receives a mysterious note with an envelope full of cash from a new client to meet at the Brooklyn Bridge. The client never shows up. When he returns to his new office, Oates finds it ransacked. Shortly afterward, a young woman hires him to find who murdered her husband, a newspaper reporter with a sordid past. The hard drinking, two fisted PI must deal with mob bosses, the police, a new federal agency and a dangerous and mysterious arms dealer selling deadly weapons to mob bosses in the city. He also tries to navigate his ongoing romance with NYPD detective Angela Lang, who is dealing with multiple murder cases with fellow detective Henry Myles. Oates's search for clues leads to a small island close to Manhattan and a Long Island mansion built during the Gilded Age.