"Joe Burgess is the most realistically drawn and memorable police detective I've encountered in years. This is as much a moral fable as it is a whodunit." ~Edward Morris, Verified Reviewer On an icy February night, the body of Steven Pleasant, a prominent Portland, Maine physician, grows cold in his parked Mercedes. All signs point to a john killed by a disgruntled hooker: his pants are unzipped, wallet is gone, and the good doctor has a reputation for entertaining girls in his car. But the deeper Detective Sergeant Joe Burgess digs, the muddier the case becomes. While juggling hookers, wives, ex-wives, fathers, stepfathers, dealers and doctors, a nurse on Pleasant's staff suggests another angle- disgruntled patients. Now, ensconced in the darkness of a sleeping hospital, Burgess comes face-to- face with ghosts from his past and must decide what being a detective really means. "If Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch lived in Maine, he'd be Joe Burgess." ~Verified Reviewer "It was the emotion that gripped me as a reader and as a person.