[6] However, in Castle's hand is a cross with an inscription; Wesley begins to look into this and discovers a series of secrets that reveal the reason for the murder and unveil a conspiracy that extends all the way to the White House.

[6] The cross is revealed to be a sigil of the Palace Council, a mysterious group of wealthy black and white power-brokers that purportedly controls the government, and which has ties to a violent guerrilla organisation known as Jewel Agony.

[7] Wesley has been trying to locate his sister, and continues to do so, while over the years changing careers from writing, where he wins two National Book Awards, to being part of the Kennedy administration and a confidant of Richard Nixon, and then leaving politics to become an investigative journalist.

[9] In The Guardian, Mark Lawson suggested that Carter's slow, methodical, well-researched writing lent the novel a sense of foreshadowing, and opined that it was a "historical thriller that efficiently deliver[ed] both thrills and history".

[6] The Washington Post was similarly positive, with Scott Simon singling out Carter's vignettes of historic figures which he considered demonstrated both scholarship and imagination, and suggested his portrayal of Richard Nixon was "pitch-perfect".

[12] Mark Bauerlein sarcastically expressed surprise that Eddie had missed Woodstock, given that he had attended every other event of significance in the 1960s, but leavened his criticism in the Wall Street Journal by noting the novel was nonetheless entertaining, and that the storytelling was "underpinned by a masterly evocation of the world of wealthy and accomplished blacks in 20th-century America".