Brooklyn homicide detective Jack Leightner doesn't know why the sight of the fatally stabbed young Hispanic man has him throwing up his dinner in the weeds by the Gowanus Canal. He's seen hundreds of corpses in his tour with the Department. Nor can he understand why the investigation into the death of this low-priority victim has become his obsession, threatening his career and possibly his own life - particularly since the search takes him exactly where he does not want to go, into the heart of Red Hook, the Brooklyn working-class community that is now little more than a ghost town. Red Hook is Leightner's bad dream. The scene of his troubled childhood, his family's history and the terrible secret in his past. In this marvellous first novel, Red Hook is the place where Jack Leightner must seek his own redemption. Gabriel Cohen has made that search both an exploration of human nature and a gripping urban thriller.