There was nothing waiting for ex-cop Max Mingus when he walked out of Attica Prison after serving hard time for murder--his adored wife died in a car crash while he was locked up. Now Miami's one-time top detective is haunted by an empty house, bad memories . . . and an impossible job offer for obscenely good money. Three years ago, Charlie Carver, the five-year-old son of a powerful Haitian billionaire, vanished. His father is offering Max $15 million to bring the boy back--or, at the very least, to find his body and deliver his abductors.

Max knows he should turn this case down. There's no way the kid is still alive, and pursuing his ghost means plunging headfirst into Haiti, a steaming island hotbed of crime, greed, voodoo, and corruption. And the three detectives who preceded Mingus are all dead . . . or worse. But Max has nothing left to lose--even if his investigation stirs up a murky evil that can swallow a man whole . . . and leads him to the soul-destroying truth about a terrifying local myth, a child-stealing nightmare called "Mr. Clarinet."

Miami, 1981. Cocaine Central. Murder Capital, USA.

A city about to catch fire.

Detective Max Mingus and his partner, Joe Liston, are anticipating a routine murder investigation when they are called to the scene of death at Miami's Primate Park--until the victim's family is found slaughtered, and a partly digested tarot card, the King of Swords, is discovered in the victim's stomach.

A trail that's growing bloodier by the hour is leading Max and Joe to the most powerful criminal in Miami: the infamous Solomon Boukman. Few have ever set eyes on the evil, intensely feared enigma, but rumors abound of voodoo ceremonies, dark rites, and friends in very high places. Malevolence is running rampant in a city choking on hatred, rage, and official corruption--as Max races to discover the terrifying truth about Boukman before death's shadow reaches his own front door.