The story takes place in 'Little Denmark' the Danish section of north and north-west Chicago, near the shore of Lake Michigan. (like Little Italy and China Town in other major urban cities) The community preserves it's Danish heritage by maintaining the architecture, custom and, civic pride of the home land. The point in time is during the mid 1940s after the war, when Interrogation and confession was the route to most convictions rather than science, as is the prime mover. A man is found floating in Lake Michigan with a hole in his head. This was obviously not the crime scene. Chicago Police Departments Detective Lieutenant Rex Feral and his acerbic partner Detective Sergeant DeChellis are called in to investigate. Like Holmes and Watson, Feral relies on his acute psychological insight, his ability to put himself in another's place, and DeChellis on his cold hard bottom line questions designed to get to the bottom of the matter fast. The victim was Chris Johnson, a down-and-out alcoholic newspaperman, but the mystery seems to center on Ilse Borge, his employer's wife. Terrorized by her husband, and subject to fainting spells, she evokes a protective impulse- even from Rex Feral. What is her relationship with Dr. Norquist, the family friend who would "do anything" for her? With her husband Oden, a weak man behind a tyrannical facade whose family's failing empire had controlled the Danish Community for generations? And with Magnussen himself, whom she dared to help behind her husband's back? With his uncanny instinct for the unnerving question and the salient detail, Feral and DeChellis penetrates all these lives and are drawn into the darkest recesses of the human mind required to unravel and reveal the elusive "truth."