From the New York Times bestselling author of The Relic comes a spellbinding new novel blending adventure, science and nail-biting suspense.In downtown Manhattan, a gruesome discovery has just been made - an underground charnel house containing the bones of dozens of murder victims.Research reveals that a serial killer was at work in New York's notorious Five Points neighbourhood in the 1880s, bent on prolonging his lifespan by any means. When a newspaper story on the old murders appears to ignite a new series of horrifyingly similar killings, panic overtakes the city.On the case are FBI Special Agent Pendergast - Southern, pale, refined, unorthodox, possessed of a Holmes-like brain and possibly the most engaging investigator in modern popular fiction; dogged NYT reporter William Smithback Jnr; and his erstwhile girlfriend Dr Nora Kelly, an archaeologist at the New York Museum of Natural History. Using every resource available they join forces to track down the killer䡥fore they become the next victims.