Who stabbed Manuel Ruiz, the 18-year-old son of highly respected State Senator Ernesto Ruiz, leaving him to die in a Manhattan alley? Police suspect it's a gang murder when they find a jacket at the scene, bearing the emblem of Las Serpientes, a street gang known as The Serps. Why would a son with a good home and a close, loving family choose to join a gang? And why was he murdered? Amateur sleuth Liz Rooney sets out to get answers, and narrowly escapes the gangland's retribution. But she provides her fiance, NYPD Homicide Detective Ike Eichle, with a vital clue, just in time for them to get married and go on their honeymoon with the case solved.