In the sweltering summer of 1841, Mary Rogers, a popular tobacco shop counter girl, is found brutally murdered in the shallows of the Hudson River. John Colt, scion of the firearm fortune, beats his publisher to death with a hatchet. And young Irish gang leader Tommy Coleman is accused of killing his daughter, wife, and her former lover. Charged with solving it all is High Constable Jacob Hays, whose investigation will span a decade, involving gang wars, grave robbers, and clues hidden in poems by the hopeless romantic and minstrel of the night, Edgar Allan Poe.