Parker and his long-time lady friend Claire are enjoying the quiet life in their New Jersey lakeside home when Parker is invited to become part of a plan to remove a large sum of cash from a glossy TV-preacher named William Archibald. It's a heist that goes wrong from the start and turns into a tense, chaotic ballet of betrayal and death. One of Parker's partners is a weak babbler, another a cold traitor. Archibald's security chief is a tenacious pursuer, intent on retrieving his employer's money. Along the way, we learn how to hide crooks, cars, and cash in a small city with an efficient police force; how to escape from a variety of traps and sealed rooms; and most of all how Parker has managed to stay alive--in readers' minds as well as in the brain of his creator--for all these years.
