A corrupt cop must investigate a series of bizarre murders in order to save his city from itself in this grim hard-boiled thriller. Middleburg, Connecticut, is a dying river town, and Tommy Lark will be its undertaker. A hardened veteran of the local police force, Lark has worked in Middleburg for twenty-two years—each one worse than the year before. When he was an idealistic young rookie, his partner killed a suspect by accident, and Lark planted a knife on the body to keep him from getting kicked off the force. Since then, he's never bothered to play fair. He'll beat a suspect, even throw him down a flight of stairs—anything to get another piece of garbage off the streets of his city. But something's coming to Middleburg that will shock the callous cop to his very core. When a string of kinky killings baffles the local police department, Lark is drawn into the darkest part of the city's underworld—where love means nothing, and a woman's life isn't worth the clothes on her back. And to save his city, Lark must risk the last good thing in his life: his daughter's love. In the tradition of Dirty Harry and Death Wish , Lark is an unflinching look at a vicious corrupt cop and the city that made him. Fans of truly hard-boiled thrillers will find Lark is one of the toughest cops mystery fiction has ever produced.