Max Jones relives his past bad decisions every day. Criminals, shady characters and women of the night continue to surround him. It's impossible to have a family when you are a private investigator. The job broke up his marriage, but it is the only job he knows.
Now separated from his family, a plague of bloody murders hits the city of Tampa, and only Max sees the connection. The thread that ties them together is almost too strange to put into words, but he knows that facts do not lie. It's not a gang or a super-villain causing the crime wave. It is a book. Max believes a paperback novel is programming its readers to kill. Somehow, the book is making them murder the people they love most!