Detective Reuben "Diego" Montoya must team up with the prime suspect in a murder case to catch a serial killer who is keeping New Orleans in the grip of fear, an investigation that leads them to an abandoned asylum where unspeakable evil awaits them.Abby Chastain is ready for a change. Again. She had come back to New Orleans, her hometown, during a rocky marriage in search of a fresh start. (Jackson acknowledges that this New Orleans is pre-Katrina, the city as "it once was and will be again.") But her husband, local shock-jock Luke Gierman, fell right back into his old womanizing ways, which lead to a bitter divorce. When Detective Reuben Montoya darkens her door with the news that Luke has been killed alongside a young woman, Abby's emotions run the gamut from apathy to despair. Terror becomes the emotion du jour, however, as Montoya begins to find connections between the two victims, many of them stemming from Our Lady of Virtues, a hospital for the mentally impaired that is set for demolition but that had once been the home of Abby's mother and the place where she fell to her self-inflicted death. Can Montoya do his job as his fondness for Abby grows and as the bodies begin to stack up? Can Abby reconcile the repressed details of her mother's time at the asylum with the facts being uncovered during the investigation?