In New Orleans, NYPD Detective Neil Hockaday and his African-American wife, Ruby Flagg, are swept up in a pungent Creole stew of family secrets, sour politics, ritual murder, and bittersweet revenge. Hock encounters a cast of only-in-New Orleans characters, including a scamming alderman, a hypnotic preacher, and a cryptic old jazz funeral man whose legendary horses weep tears when they pull hearses through the sad and gaudy streets of the Big Easy.