Mark Smith's Literary Masterpiece of Crime Fiction. A National Book Award Finalist The blockbuster New York Times bestseller. "Remarkable for both its ambition and its accomplishment, it reads as though it were written by a resurrected Charles Dickens, one chilled by a hundred years of graveyard brooding...every page is a pleasure to read, " New York Times A killer calling himself The Deathmaker is on the loose, pursued by Arnold Magnuson, a grief-stricken detective on the verge of a mental breakdown. Magnuson's dogged investigation to find the killer, and himself, takes him deep into urban Chicago, laying bare the corrupt city and its seething soul in all its macabre, heartbreaking, and violent complexity. It's a sprawling, utterly compelling story, widely regarded as a stunning literary achievement and perhaps the best detective novel ever written. "A masterpiece . . . raises Dickens' benign ghost to remind us again that we're all connected, all both innocent and guilty, " Kirkus Reviews "A brilliant and arresting novel which so far transcends the detective genre that inspired it as to stand in a category of its own, " Arkansas Gazette "In its sustained vitality, power and scale, it is unlike any other fiction I have read....A complex and unforgettable novel, " The Times (London)