From the bestselling author of 'The Relic' comes a spellbinding new novel blending adventure, science and nail-biting suspense.
In downtown Manhattan, a gruesome discovery has just been made - an underground charnel house containing the bones of dozens of murder victims.
Research reveals that a serial killer was at work in New York's notorious Five Points neighbourhood in the 1880s, bent on prolonging his lifespan by any means. When a newspaper story on the old murders appears to ignite a new series of horrifying similar killings, panic overtakes the city.
On the case are FBI Special Agent Pendergast - southern, pale, refined, unorthodox, possessed of a Holmes-like brain and possibly the most engaging investigator in modern popular fiction; dogged NYT report William Smithback Jnr; and his erstwhile girlfriend Dr Nora Kelly, an archaeologist at the New York Museum of Natural History.
Using every resource available they join forces to track down the killer . . . before they become the next victims.