New York City's Alphabet City is a magnet for desperate hustlers, con men, and last-chance addicts. Payton Sherwood knows that scene. But Payton also lives by a white-knight creed derived from the heroes of Golden Age detective fiction. And like those renowned hardboiled private eyes, he is riddled with loss--the loss of an old love who still exists in daydreams, and the loss of a city he barely recognizes.

Payton takes a wrong turn on a side street and stumbles into trouble in the form of three bull-necked heavies and a tough sixteen-year-old runaway named Gloria Manlow. After taking a savage beating, he tracks Gloria through Alphabet City, where the shadows that frighten aren't those that shade the street, but rather the soul. Payton's dusk-to-dawn nightmare on the wild side is about to begin--and nothing will stop it but death.