"Daylight illuminated the ugly gray sprawl of techno-glazed, failing metropolis, ruthlessly exposing every flaw and glitch in the whole rotten machine. My city. Lucky me. It's probably better than I deserve." So speaks Victor Friar, law officer of a far-flung colony planet and one of the city's finest, way back when. Now, he's breaking in a new partner and learning that the past cannot be avoided forever, no matter how hard you try. Likewise is privately licensed detective Maxwell Canon, veteran of the most recent wars and working hand to mouth in the unappreciated field of badgeless detecting. Police chief Frank Skills is getting sick of them both and wonders if they'll heed his warnings about working cases neither has the authority to pursue, or if they'll just end up dead, one after the other. If he introduces them, will they get dead faster or actually discover who is out to make the police department look bad and flood their beloved city with designer drugs and guns? They're all running out of options as a simple roadhouse killing leads them into a far more complicated vortex of drugs, mafia gods and murder.