Miami, 1981. When Detective Max Mingus and his partner Joe are called to the scene of a death at Miami’s Primate Park, it looks like another routine — if slightly bizarre — investigation. Until two things turn up: the victim’s family, slaughtered; and a partly digested tarot card in the dead man’s stomach. The King of Swords.

An increasingly bloody trail leads Max and Joe first to a sinister fortune-teller and her scheming pimp son, then to the infamous Solomon Boukman. Few have ever met the most feared criminal in Miami, but rumours abound of a forked tongue, voodoo ceremonies and friends in very high places.