"Twas the night before Christmas, and dozens of rich, influential hostages are trapped inside a sprawling lakefront mansion in New Orleans. The perp? Detective Reed Ware, model cop turned outlaw. After receiving a panicked call from Hollis "Holly" Bayard, a teenage street tough with a penchant for amateur sleuthing who stumbles upon the scene of a drug-deal-turned- murder, Ware finds his and his friend's lives in dire danger. The crime Holly witnessed...

Captain Patti O'Shay, still grieving over the murder of her husband, is stunned when skeletal remains of a female victim, who is missing her right hand, are unearthed in City Park along with her husband's police badge, forcing her to reopen a cold case involving a dangerous killer known as "The Handyman."

Just a rookie, New Orleans beat cop Maureen Coughlin has already been suspended from the force. And things are about to get worse. The FBI is in town on the trail of a ruthless anti-government militia group, the Watchmen Brigade. Nobody in the NOPD wants any part of working with them-- but a suspended rookie doesn't have a choice. The city is one big powder keg-- and it looks like Coughlin will be the one who lights a match....

Having chased corrupt evangelist and dangerous presidential hopeful Errol Jacomine for years, New Orleans detective Skip Langdon finds her loved ones targeted and realizes that Jacomine is so carefully disguised that nobody recognizes him.