Mercy Torcher goes solo in this 4th of the Mercy Investigations Novels, leaving her partner, Jack Nowan, her mentor Steady Ed Steadman, and their apprentice Reggie Jackson, on their own to run the show in San Francisco, after her father and friend Superior Court Chief Judge Allwin Torcher asks her to come back to Boston, her home town, to look into the possibility that a black man who confessed to a murder did not in fact commit the crime that put him in state prison. She returns without hesitation to help her father, staying in their home on Beacon Hill, but has to go undercover to accomplish her task, working with the Boston Ombudsman for Prosecutorial Misconduct, transforming herself into a Latina from Stockton, from longtime Hispanic residents of California. Mercy's natural olive complexion allows her to pass for many other kinds of people. This assignment gets her involved, way beyond its original intent, with the various mobs of Boston - Irish, Latino, Jamaican, Russian, and the bent cops and officials who help to empower them. Mercy has help available, but is largely on her own, trying to make sense out of a dangerous mess in order to help her father, the Judge, and get back to her home and compatriots in San Francisco in one piece.