Isaac Sidel, the ex-First Deputy of New York City, is at his lowest ebb. A wounded romantic, he now lives a lonely existence at a grimy hotel on West Forty-seventh street, lamenting the death of Blue Eyes Coen, his most favoured cop, and the waywardness of his daughter, Marilyn the Wild. Still blighted by the Guzmanns, the ruthless criminal family, and ravaged with bitterness and guilt, Isaac yet falls in love with Annie, a beguiling Irish prostitute with a dark secret. Secret Isaac trails our forlorn hero from New York's political halls to the depths of Dublin's Joycean underworld as, on her behalf, he pursues a terrible and exacting revenge.