[1] The main characters in the novel are Steve Peterson, whose wife Nina was murdered two years before, his six-year-old son Neil, who witnessed the murder, and Sharon Martin, a young journalist who befriends them both.

A young man named Ronald Thompson has been sentenced to death for Nina's murder.

The real killer is a psychopath named August Rommel Taggart, Arty for short.

He kidnaps Sharon and Neil, hiding them under New York's famed Grand Central Station.

The novel was made into a 1982 film starring Rip Torn, James Naughton, and Kate Mulgrew.