As he carves a new life on the quarantine moon first revealed in The Lazaretto, Gregor Lepov is hired to solve the perplexing disappearances of its citizens into a mysterious basement apartment. Detective Ed MacNally of Lazaretto Homicide is busy training his new partner, Menya Russell, with whom he is investigating the murder of a man whose body was recently uncovered after thirty years. Thieves, corpses, ladies and liars lure Lepov and MacNally into the Lazaretto's disturbing past. Has the killer that was active thirty years ago begun killing again? And after Lepov is nearly killed...

Not every ghost is dead. For Gregor Lepov, quarantine was never more agonizing than the day his ex-wife walked into his office. With a new husband at her side and a plea for help on her lips, the former Gloria Lepov hires Gregor to hunt down a stolen artifact on a trail littered with the dead. Haunted by her betrayals of the past, he determines to solve her case then throw her off his world before she ruins him a second time. Lilly Stewart has mysteriously chosen to give up her lucrative antiquities business to stay with Lepov in the Lazaretto. Bedeviled by the arrival of his ex-wife, she...