"Russo has an excellent eye for the urban landscape [and] the crime writer's well-tuned ear for vernacular … from street punks right up to the high-level officials." — Asimov's Science Fiction

In the San Francisco of the future, technology advances while society declines. Against a vividly realized urban backdrop, one of the police force's last honest cops is trying to trace the connection between a series of seemingly unrelated murders. Detective Frank Carlucci manages to thwart his crooked department's efforts to block his investigations — only to discover an even deeper pit of corruption in the form of a black market run by political officials.
Author Richard Paul Russo twice received the Philip K. Dick Award: in 1989, for his second novel, Subterranean Gallery, and in 2001 for Ship of Fools. This hard-boiled thriller is the second volume of the critically acclaimed Carlucci Trilogy, consisting of Destroying Angel, Carlucci's Edge, and Carlucci's Heart. All three works offer a gripping combination of classic noir mystery and futuristic cyberpunk fiction.

"One of the best blends of SF and mystery yet written." — Science Fiction Chronicle

"Russo's latest SF crime novel is mean streets, callous megacorps, venal politicians, and ordinary lowlifes in a jam … Russo's characters succeed in stirring our empathy, but their strangeness is what holds our attention." — Analog