Detective Danny Credence has a gold shield and some dubious morals. An insolent man in a profane society, the madness doesn't stop when he walks out the precinct doors. This first book in the series is driven as much by Danny's struggle to find his place in a society gone insane as by the cases he cracks under deep cover. But Credence is more than the tough, ruthless cop that he'd like you to think he is. In his heart and in his head he knows. The criminality of the world is only a symptom. What eats away at him is the deeper sickness of a society in which notoriety and self-exploitation are the cornerstones of success. This makes him the man that he is and drives him to do the things he does. All this comes to a boil when Credence finds out he's just been scratching the surface of human depravity. His latest assignment is about to drag him under, bringing him face to face with a new kind of evil. Every violent, wicked moment in his miserable life has been a buildup to this reckoning. A darkness he cannot defeat. The devil inside us all.