This is a contemporary hard-boiled noir mystery set in New York's seedy underworld.Macey's, New York, five days before Christmas. When a hit is carried out on one Anthony Macguire - family man, legitimate construction manager, known mobster - while shopping for his wife's gift, New York's Organized Crime Control Bureau goes into damage limitation mode. It's Lieutenant Solly Epstein's job to make sure the press don't link the murder to those of three other members of Paulie 'Margarine' Marginella's crew and spook the public with tales of gang warfare. But Solly just wants the case cleared up before his wife has their baby - which is already two weeks late.As rival gangs are implicated and the hitman no longer seems under anyone's control, Epstein's sergeant, Billy Boyle, is like a rottweiler straining at the leash for some action - and not necessarily of the legal kind. With livelihoods - and lives - hanging in the balance, the stakes couldn't be higher. The winner will take it all, but with everybody seemingly double-crossing everybody else, who will that be?