An old friend from his baseball days asks Alex McKnight to help him find an ex-lover. Alex knows it's a long shot, but loyalty gets the better of him and he heads back to Detroit - to find his friend's lost love and his own lost life.

Taunted as a freak because he was unable to speak, school is a nightmare for Michael until he discovers that he has a special talent that makes people sit up and take notice: he can open locks. But breaking into the house of a rival school's quarterback lands him in hot water, and he soon finds himself on a downward trajectory.

Half a lifetime ago, Alex McKnight was a young cop in Detroit. Now he's an occasional private eye up in Paradise, Michigan, and trying hard to put the past behind him. Then he gets the call that every cop dreads: a killer he helped put behind bars is getting released, and he might just have payback on his mind. Suddenly the years fall away, and in his mind Alex is back in that hot summer in Detroit, hunting the brutal murderer of a young woman. The problem is, something about the case no longer makes sense, and Alex feels compelled to retrace the steps that led to the arrest and conviction of...