An activist attorney is murdered at the foot of Angel's Flight, an elevated railway in the heart of downtown Los Angeles - far from Harry Bosch's Hollywood turf. But the case is so explosive - Howard Elias's lawsuits charging the LAPD with racism and brutality made him a celebrity and a success that earned him the hatred of practically every cop in the city. The suspects are so numerous that it falls to Harry to solve it. Now the streets are super-heating with racial tension and it will only take one mis-step for that tension to boil over. Harry's marriage seems to have unraveled - but has his wife left him for good, or has she fallen deeper into a dangerous addiction? And the hunt for a killer is leading Harry into S and M parlours, dark corners of the internet, into confrontations with violent cops and to another high-profile L.A. murder case - one where every cop had a motive. Harry battles to save his job, his marriage and his city.