Itโs a crime tailor-made for the Peculiar Crimes Unit: a controversial artist is murdered and displayed as part of her own outrageous installation. No suspects, no motive, no evidenceโitโs business as usual for the Unitโs cantankerous founding partners, Arthur Bryant and John May. But this time they have an eyewitness. According to twelve-year-old Luke Tripp, the killer was a cape-clad highwayman atop a black stallion.
As implausible as the boyโs story sounds, Bryant and May take it seriously when โThe Highwaymanโ is spotted again, striking a dramatic pose at the scene of his next outlandish murder. Whatever the killerโs real identity, he seems intent on killing off a string of minor celebrities while becoming one himself.
As the tabloids look to make a quick bundle on โHighwayman Fever,โ Bryant and May, along with the newest member of the Unit, Mayโs agoraphobic granddaughter, April, find themselves sorting out a case involving an unlikely combination of artistic rivalries, sleazy sex affairs, the Knights Templars, and street gang feuds. To do it, theyโre going to have to use every orthodoxโand unorthodoxโmeans at their disposal, including myth, witchcraft, and the psychogeographic history of the cityโs โmonsters,โ past and present.
And if one unsolvable crime werenโt enough, this case has disturbing links to a decades-old killing spree that nearly destroyed the partnership of Bryant and May once beforeโฆand may again. The Peculiar Crimes Unit is one murder away from being closed down for goodโand that murder could be their own.