An injured woman stumbles into an inner-city hospital with a horrifying story- she has just been car-jacked by a man who was apparently unaware that her son was asleep on the back seat. As a search ensues, a shrewd detective and an ambitious young reporter smell a hoax and begin to suspect that the woman is holding back a terrible truth- could she have murdered her own child?

Back in the bad old days, in mid-nineties New York, seven young cops fresh to anti-crime were given a ticket to ride in one of the worst precincts of the East Bronx. They became The Wild Geese: a tight-knit crew of mavericks, looking out for each other and their 'family' of neighbourhood locals. Within five years, all the WGs had moved on. Now only a hard-core five remain in contact, crossing paths in life and work, held back in both by a dogged obsession with their 'Whites'. Every cop has a personal 'White': those who had committed criminal obscenities on their watch and then walked away untouched by justice, leaving the detectives heading into retirement plagued with guilt, calling victim's families on anniversaries and desperately searching for ways to finally nail the perpetrators.

Whenever people asked him, Eric Cash used to have a dozen answers. Artist, actor, screenwriter… But now he's thirty-five years old and he's still living on the Lower East Side, still in the restaurant business, still serving the people he wanted to be. What does Eric do? He manages. Not like Ike Marcus. Ike was young, good-looking, people liked him. Ask him what he did, he wouldn't say tending bar. He was going places--until two street kids stepped up to him and Eric one night and pulled a gun. At least, that's Eric's version --

Ray Mitchell, a former TV writer who has left Hollywood under a cloud, returns to urban Dempsy, New Jersey, hoping to make a difference in the lives of his struggling neighbors. Instead, his very public and emotionally suspect generosity gets him beaten nearly to death. Ray refuses to name his assailant, which makes him intensely interesting to Detective Nerese Ammons, a friend from childhood, who now sets out to unlock the secret of his reticence. Set against the intensely realized backdrop of urban America, the cat and mouse game that unfolds is both morally complex and utterly gripping --