Pendergast-the world's most enigmatic FBI Special Agent-returns to <ST1:CITY w:st="on"><ST1:PLACE w:st="on">New York City</ST1:PLACE></ST1:CITY> to investigate a murderous cult. <br><br>William Smithback, a <i>New York Times</i> reporter, and his wife Nora Kelly, a <ST1:PLACETYPE w:st="on">Museum</ST1:PLACETYPE> of <ST1:PLACENAME w:st="on">Natural History</ST1:PLACENAME> archaeologist, are brutally attacked in their apartment on <ST1:CITY w:st="on">Manhattan</ST1:CITY>'s <ST1:PLACE w:st="on">Upper West Side</ST1:PLACE>. Eyewitnesses claim, and the security camera confirms, that the assailant was their strange, sinister neighbor-a man who, by all reports, was already dead and buried weeks earlier. While Captain Laura Hayward leads the official investigation, Pendergast and Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta undertake their own private-and decidedly unorthodox-quest for the truth. Their serpentine journey takes them to an enclave of <ST1:CITY w:st="on"><ST1:PLACE w:st="on">Manhattan</ST1:PLACE></ST1:CITY> they never imagined could exist: a secretive, reclusive cult of Obeah and vodou which no outsiders have ever survived.<br><br>