The Butcher

Chicago, 1930. The city is bleeding.

In the sprawling, stinking industrial heart of Chicago, a new kind of monster is at work. The Stockyards, the factories, the rail yards—these temples of American industry have become a hunting ground. The victims have nothing in common: a Polish meat-packer, an Irish rail-worker, a Negro seamstress, an Italian foreman, a Swedish janitor. The only connection is the weapon: a meat cleaver, wielded with a ferocity that speaks of a mind unmoored from humanity.

Fletcher "Fletch" McGregor is drawn into the case by the sheer, senseless horror of it. Eleanor "Nora" Sharpe reports on the atrocities, her stomach turning with each new discovery, her resolve tested by the depravity. Detective Patrick "Paddy" O'Malley faces pressure from a city on the brink of panic, his own sense of order shattered by the random brutality.

Their only lead is a whisper in the underworld, from the one man who knows the city's darkest secrets: "Silky" Sam O'Hara, the fixer who trades in information and lives. As the body count rises and the city holds its breath, the trio must descend into an abyss of madness. They will chase a phantom, a killer who murders without pattern, without motive, and without remorse. To stop the butcher, they must first understand a mind where the line between man and monster has been utterly erased. And when the final, shocking truth is revealed, Chicago will be left with a question that has no answer: why?