Power corrupts. Power and money corrupt absolutely. In Washington, Senator Landon Meyer—leading presidential candidate and pivotal voice in a divided senate—imposes his choices to fill two Supreme Court vacancies on the President. In San Francisco, Charlie Palmer—a specialist in burying the crimes of the political and financial elite—lies paralyzed by a gunshot. Linking the two is the senator's all-too-cunning brother—a federal judge secretly managing his campaign. An hour before his death, Palmer reaches out to private investigator Graham Gage, a man he's both feared and admired, but his words remain choked in his throat. A funeral-day burglary of Palmer's office and a wife's plea for the truth about her husband's misdeeds plunge Gage into a morass of murder, corporate cover-ups, and corrupted justice that masks a political money-laundering scheme threatening to destroy not only our democracy, but all that is dear to Gage . . .