`I am thoroughly dislikeable. I know that. I am obnoxious, obscene, violent, lustful in my thoughts and bitter in my memories. I am untrustworthy, deceitful, opportunist, sly, brutal, usurious, unstable, uncharitable, and vengeance, always, is mine. I am capricious and heretic, appalling and cruel. I am the Son of Man.'

Joe Panther is a man with many dangerous secrets. He is a private investigator. He is a drug-dealer. He is a killer. And, most notably, he is the Messiah, fallen on hard times. When a young woman is murdered in an inner-city church, the police suspect the local priest, who hires Panther to clear his name. Soon, he becomes both hunter and hunted. Nothing is as it seems - not even, perhaps, Panther's own sense of self.