Katherine Kinneavy is an NYPD homicide detective with a drinking problem, an Irish temper and an unflagging commitment to any case she's assigned. Wendell Roane is an ambitious reporter specializing in stories about violence against women. Joe Cataldo is an overworked Mafia underboss desperate to keep things on an even keel, lest New York's underworld regress into the wars and bloodbaths of the '30s and '70s. When a mob lieutenant and a bar owner, both with a history of unspeakable crimes against women, turn up dead on the same cold autumn morning, a vigilante group styling itself "Judith" takes credit for both killings and promises more. These three vastly different people crash into each other's orbit in search of the group, and no matter how the search ends, it may leave everything they think they know about themselves and the worlds they live in shaken to the very core.