Ethan Muller is struggling to establish his reputation as a dealer in the cutthroat world of contemporary art when he stumbles onto a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: in a decaying New York slum, an elderly tenant named Victor Cracke has disappeared, leaving behind an enormous trove of original artwork. Nobody can say anything for certain about Cracke except that he came and went in solitude for nearly forty years, his genius hidden and unacknowledged. But all that is about to change.
So what if, strictly speaking, the art doesn’t belong to Ethan? He can sell it–and he does just that, mounting a wildly successful show. Buyers clamor. Critics sing.  Museums are interested, and Ethan’s photo looks great in The New York Times. And that’s when things go to hell.
Suddenly the police are interested in talking to him. It seems that Victor Cracke had a nasty past, and the drawings hanging in the Muller Gallery have begun to look a lot less like art and a lot more like evidence. Is Cracke a genius? A murderer? Both? Is there a difference? Sucked into an investigation four decades cold, Ethan will uncover a secret legacy of shame and death, one that touches horrifyingly close to home.