Three men are shot a few blocks apart, and Ivan Monk looks for a connection.

Scatterboy Williams is a small-time hustler selling bogus Cartier watches in the dives of Pacific City, a port just south of Los Angeles. He has $250 in his pocket the night a stranger guns him down in the street. The next victim is Ronny Aaron, a crack pusher who's shot to death on his way out of the liquor store. The third is Jimmy Henderson, a college student whose fighting instincts keep him from succumbing to two bullet wounds. They have nothing in common besides the neighborhood where they were shot and the color of their skin. When the police let Scatterboy's murder fall through the cracks, his girlfriend hires private eye Ivan Monk to find the killer. What looks like an ordinary squabble between thieves turns out to be a racist conspiracy with the potential to upend life all along the West Coast.