Harry Bosch is in the middle of a major case in Los Angeles when his world is turned upside down with one phone call. His usual Sunday morning call to his daughter, who lives with her mother in Hong Kong, is answered by a stranger. Harry learns through the cryptic conversation that he has stumbled into the middle of a kidnapping. His daughter is being held until her mother, Eleanor Wish, can win enough money in the poker rooms of nearby Macau to buy her back.