In Thomas Perrys Edgar-winning debut The Butchers Boy, a professional killer betrayed by the Mafia leaves countless mobsters dead and then disappears. Justice Department official Elizabeth Waring is the only one who believes he ever existed. Many years later, the Butchers Boy finds his peaceful life threatened when a Mafia hit team finally catches up with him. He knows they wont stop coming and decides to take the fight to their door.Soon Waring, now high up in the Organized Crime Division of the Justice Department, receives a surprise latenight visit from the Butchers Boy. Knowing she keeps track of the Mafia, he asks her whom his attackers worked for, offering information that will help her crack an unsolved murder in return. So begins a new assault on organized crime and an uneasy alliance between opposite sides of the law. As the Butchers Boy works his way ever closer to his quarry in an effort to protect his new way of life, Waring is in a race against time, either to convince him to become a protected informantor to take him out of commission for good.