We’re born in the crossfire between heaven and hell, and we remain there until the end. Which way we’re pushed is not always up to us.

Holidays are the time of new beginnings. Still on the mend from a bullet to the shoulder, private investigator Gideon Rimes is embracing his budding relationship with attorney Phoenix Trinidad and the Buffalo Police Department’s tenuous new respect. But the honeymoon period is cut short when a missing person case comes to Driftglass Investigations.

A much-loved teacher and his girlfriend Keisha, a doctor and volunteer church secretary, both inexplicably overdose on heroin in their parked car. The boyfriend dies on the scene and is immediately labeled a drug dealer by informants. But the girlfriend survives...until she mysteriously vanishes before a day treatment center appointment, leaving behind her wallet, phone, car, and a note begging her parents not to look for her.

Needing to know she’s safe, Keisha’s parents hire Rimes to find their daughter and if in trouble, bring her home.

But others are looking for her, too - and willing to kill. The pursuit for the widening truth leads Rimes through the city’s underbelly of homelessness and mental illness to the merciless allure of greed and power. It’s one holiday season promising to be anything but peace on earth.

“A nonstop thrill ride through the mean streets of Buffalo.” (Tim O’Mara, author of the Raymond Donne series)