A dead lawyer, a briefcase full of cash, and half a lifetime of keeping it a secret in the Holy City.

Wyatt Brewer has a respectable life as a newspaper reporter in the 21st century in the Holy City-Charleston, S.C. One winter morning, he is assigned to cover the death of a mysterious Estonian who washed up on Folly Beach. When intelligence agents Bert Wilson and Penelope Lowe pick him up for interrogation, Wyatt understands he's stumbled into an underground world of spies, Eastern European gangsters, and corrupt government officials-and his 20-year-old theft has come back to haunt him.

Part southern crime novel, part cat-and-mouse espionage thriller, Jon Sealy's fourth novel is a meditation on the many ways the human heart can betray us.