[4] LAPD detective Harry Bosch and his rookie partner, Lucia Soto, are assigned the case of mariachi performer Orlando Merced, who was shot in a crowded Los Angeles square and was paralyzed from the waist down.

When the bullet is finally removed from his body, Bosch establishes that Merced was shot with a hunting rifle and that the crime was a targeted hit, not a random act of gang violence as originally suspected.

This new evidence leads Bosch to one of the city's most powerful businessmen, and a controversial former mayor with aspirations of becoming governor.

The trail leads them to a series of robberies across Greater Los Angeles that the FBI believe were used to fund a white supremacist militia group, and ultimately to a witness hiding in a convent on the Mexican border.

Over the course of the story, Bosch wrestles with the knowledge that his retirement is imminent and makes it his mission to train Soto to take over in the LAPD's Open-Unsolved Unit.