Redmond Kane is a hard-drinking, hard-hitting investigative journalist on Chicago's Herald Gazette He sees the reporter as a kind of priest and his current crusades are to find Paul O'Meara, his hero and substitute father, who vanished 20 years ago, and to destroy Harv Gunther, last of the robber barons and corrupt civic leader The trail leads to the swamps of Brazil and a cold- eyed madam who sacrifices teenage girls to rich men's twisted lusts