London in the 18th century is one of the most dangerous cities in the world.?a status helped along by the lack of any organized police force. Instead, peacekeeping falls on the shoulders of ?parish watchmen? like George Man, who spends his nights patrolling the seedy streets. After years of tangling with thieves and whores and cutthroats, he ought to be inured to the worst the city can offer up. But then he stumbles on the emaciated corpse of a notorious miser, tied to a chair and left to starve to death in a boarded-up building. It isn't the murder that disturbs Man's sleep but the method: Just 50 years earlier, the Great Plague had devastated London, and its victims?and their families?were similarly sealed in their homes to die. The Plague has recently been rumored to have re-emerged in France, and it could (perish the thought ) have leapt the Channel: Was the miser's murder a frantic attempt to stave off another epidemic? Or is a particularly devious criminal mind at work?