After getting canned from the Seattle PD, brilliant, wisecracking Thomas Prescott follows his sister Lacy to Philadelphia, where she swims on the Drexel University team. While Thomas’s slapstick antics mask a keen analytic mind, it’s his nose for trouble that leads him again and again into dicey situations. The ex–homicide detective is not long in Philly before getting caught up in two high-powered criminal cases.

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Thomas stumbles into a crime scene amid the Occupy Philadelphia protests. Activist Brooke Wexley has been strangled within sight of city hall. While demonstrating against economic inequality, the college student hid her own family’s wealthy background. The über-rich Wexleys have many dark secrets—one of which may have led to Brooke’s violent death.

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Thomas is also called to join an emergency multiagency task force on the trail of a prolific serial killer who leaves gruesome calling cards: a three-digit number carved on each of his many victims. It’s when Thomas realizes the murders are linked to the Numbers—the old illegal street lottery—that his investigation shifts into high gear. The trail jumps back to the past before rushing back to the present like a tsunami of fire, bent on revenge.

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Amid all this, Lacy has a health scare, and Thomas’s priorities shift. Encountering gambling church ladies, felonious businessmen, and murderous mobsters—with an investigation hampered by a competitive colleague and Lacy’s narcoleptic pug—Thomas must summon all his considerable powers to root out the guilty and dangerous while caring for his adored sister.