From the back cover: Eddie Nickles has just retired from twenty-five years as a homicide detective. But when a mysterious man appears at his door asking him to investigate the double murder in Washington, D.C., Eddie finds he cannot resist. Little does he realize that someone may decide it really will be Eddie's last case. As vital clues point Eddie down a dangerously deadly path, he finds himself involved in a high-stakes game of international intrigue and deception. With a killer on his tail, retirement suddenly seems like a luxury.
Returning from William D. Pease's first novel, the much acclaimed Playing the Dozens, Eddie Nickles has just retired after twenty-five years as a Washington, D.C., homicide detective. He doesn't intend to do any freelance work, but when a mysterious businessman comes to his door offering Nickles a lot of money to find the street person who may have been responsible for a double murder in D.C., Eddie accepts the job. He is too good at it, and it almost costs him his life and that of his eighteen-year-old daughter. Now he finds himself enmeshed with Russian "free market" mafiosi, ex-KGBers also on the take, street rappers, and a U.S. agency that doesn't exist. A local incident becomes an international chase, with Nickles playing David to the Goliaths who are seeking supremacy in the new world order.
