Representing the system's most unsavory characters in his work as a criminal defense lawyer, jaded attorney Mickey Haller takes on his first high-paying and possibly innocent client in years, but finds the case complicated by sinister events that suggest the workings of a particularly evil perpetrator.
Thanks to a heart transplant, former FBI agent Terrell McCaleb is enjoying a quiet retirement, renovating the fishing boat he lives on in Los Angeles Harbor. But McCaleb's calm seas turn choppy when a story in the "What Happened To?" column of the LA Times brings him face-to-face with the sister of the woman whose heart now beats in his chest. From her, McCaleb learns a terrible truth: that the donor of his heart was not killed in an accident, as he'd been told, but was murdered. Wracked with guilt over the fact that he's alive because another human being was killed, McCaleb embarks on a private investigation of his donor's murder - a crime as horrific as anything he ever encountered as a serial killer investigator for the FBI.
A young woman finds herself caught up in a scam which may cost her the one thing she values more than her life... Cassie Black has been lured back to the criminal profession she gave up - robbing gamblers of their winnings - by a proposition that is just too good to miss. The job goes as planned, except that the target has too much money. It can only mean someone very powerful is going to be very angry indeed. Cassie finds herself on the run from a killer who seems to know her every move in advance. Worse still, he is closing in on the one thing Cassie will do anything to protect.
When Dave Gurney, retired NYPD homicide detective, is contacted by an old college acquaintance about some startling letters he's been receiving, it is at first little more than a diverting but sinister puzzle. Then the acquaitance is killed. Gurney finds himself in the midst of a murder investigation that makes no sense.