Motor City private investigator Amos Walker has long been reluctant to embrace technology. But crime marches on, and twenty-first-century Detroit has embraced the digital age. Walker gets proof of that when a vintage merchandise dealer asks him to recover not classic items from the early twentieth century, but a bunch of HDTV converter boxes that the shopkeeper has been selling as a sideline.

Walker knows where to find people who fence hot merchandise. But when he stumbles onto the dead body of a suspect, he starts to think that something other than converter boxes has been stolen. When he gets a visit from attractive Deputy Marshal Mary Ann Thaler, he's glad to see her. But Walker's old friend drags him out of bed to go with her to answer pointed questions about why his card was found on the dead body of his latest client. Once Walker has finished explaining, he feels honor-bound to find out who killed these people and why, even if it means cooperating with local police and the feds. But he's on his own when he discovers why so many people are interested in his case. The converter boxes were being used to smuggle high-grade heroin that's been killing off junkies left and right. The trail to the missing dope might lead him to whoever's cutting a swath of death as wide as the interstate.