Rain Falls Harder in Seattle. Under the Gray Sky, Blood Looks Black.
When a coded message from Morgan Bickford appears in the San Francisco Examiner, Neville Stryker knows Senator George Hearst has another job waiting. The trail leads north to Seattle, a booming frontier city where fortunes are being made, laws are being bent, and powerful men are determined to control both.
At the center of the fight is Lou Graham, the formidable owner of Seattle's most famous high-end bordello. Reformers, politicians, and ambitious rivals are working behind the scenes to shut her down, or take everything she's built.
Hearst wants the pressure stopped.
Stryker has his own way of handling problems.
Moving through Seattle's saloons, waterfront docks, boardinghouses, and backroom political deals, Stryker begins peeling back the layers of extortion, hypocrisy, and violence that hold the city together. The deeper he digs, the clearer the truth becomes: in a town built on vice, the people shouting loudest about morality usually have the most to hide.
And when Neville Stryker starts pulling on loose threads, the powerful men of Seattle learn a hard lesson.
Some sins can be forgiven.
Others are settled with a gun.
