Publisher's Synopsis
Boston, winter of 1885. A string of kidnappings plagues the snow-laden city of Boston while a murderer runs amok, hunting and killing the unborn babies of the city's social elite. A powerful group called the Valentine Society controls the city's police department, and the people of Boston's last hope for justice lies in the hands of a man who mysteriously washes ashore from a distant foreign land, battered and bruised. To complicate matters, he doesn't remember who he is or where he's from... Just a week after he is found unconscious aboard a cargo ship, Officer Silas de San Michel is thrust into a mysterious case dealing with the vicious killings of pregnant teenage girls. But what he doesn't know is that these young girls belong to the secret Valentine Society, an elite group of Boston socialites that have corrupted the city's top officials, unashamedly operating above the law. With the help of his boss, the highly intelligent Inspector Belloc, and his lovely assistant, the boisterous and spirited Miss Posy Chapman, Silas embarks on a journey that takes him inside a secret world of rules and privileges, of oppressive parents and mischievous alliances. Weighed down by the sickness of memory loss, Silas struggles to maintain his sanity as he begins to discover the darkness plaguing his own sordid past, a darkness that ultimately brings him to the brink of becoming that which he hunts, a serial killer who was raised and trained by an insidious organization known only as The Factory.
