In a little tin office in the heart of this city, Amos Walker holds on to his dignity, his memories, and his way of doing business. Then he gets a case that brings all three together in a collision that would do the Ford Freeway proud.
A slick art expert hires Walker to bodyguard a blackmail transaction involving a priceless work: a long-missing piece of fifteenth-century illuminated manuscript called the Hours of the Virgin. The exchange is set for a downtown porn theater. And it might have all gone according to plan if a beautiful woman with mismatched eyes hadn't sat down next to Walker in the dark, while someone tried to kill him from behind.
Now the Hours of the Virgin is loose somewhere in Detroit. And while Walker looks for the manuscript he is pulled back through the darkest chapters of his own past, to the shooting death of his partner twenty years before. With a crippled billionaire pornographer, a trophy wife, and a white-collar criminal all key players in the case. Walker suddenly realizes he has a chance to get his hands on not only a priceless work of art but a gun that will put a murderer behind bars. All Walker has to do is grovel, duck, lie, steal, and kill - and do each better than the people who are out to do the same to him.