The call is brief. There's been a murder in the family of Lieutenant Decker's half brother, Rabbi Jonathan Levine. Ephraim Lieber, a Hassidic Jew with a catalogue of problems in the past, was found dead in a seedy Manhattan hotel and his niece, fiften-year-old Shaynda, is missing. Jonathan pleads with his policeman brother to come to New York to help. Reluctantly Decker agrees, taking his wife Rina and their young daughter with him for company. Soon after arriving on the East Coast Decker is infuriated to discover that Shaynda's parents have changed their minds about involving him in the case. Faced with a hostile family, a local police force mired in international problems and an unfamiliar underworld, he's suddenly on his own, thrust into a world divided mercilessly into killers and victims.