In June of 1899, a puzzling summons to the police station knocks the Reverend Charles Lauchlan’s industrious life as a young Presbyterian minister off the rails. At the station he finds his former university roommate, Peter McEvoy, who has been arrested for murder.
The chief of police says it’s an open and shut case but Sergeant Andrew Setter—labelled as a misfit by his brother officers—disagrees. Charles and Setter become uneasy allies in a search that takes Charles from the sleaziest bars to the most sumptuous drawing rooms of turn of the century Winnipeg. On the way, he uses his pastoral skills in ways never anticipated in the seminary. He must risk everything as time runs out, even his heart, in order to find the real killer.