I truly enjoyed reading this book and I look forward to reading Sam Bourne's next novel. He is an excellent author!

Will Monroe, a news junkie, is a journalist for The New York Times. He is the most recently hired journalist and is assigned his first murder case.

Howard Macrae, a pimp in Brooklyn, is the first murdered. The mission has officially begun.

Then another murder occurs in a remote cabin in the Pacific Northwest. While Will is in the Pacific Northwest covering the murder of Pat Baxter, his wife is kidnapped back in New York.

Will turns to his best friend Tom Fontaine, a computer genius, to track the e-mail address that sent Will the message of his wife's abduction. Tom tracks the e-mail address to an internet cafe in Crown Heights, New York, the biggest Hasidic community in America.

After attempting to track down his wife in the Hasidic community on his own and failing miserably at it, Will enlists the help of his former girlfriend, TC. Because TC is Jewish she will blend in with the Hasidic community and not arouse too much suspicion by asking questions and attempting to locate Beth, Will's wife.

An eighteen-year old is murdered in India. A pastor is murdered in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. A wealthy businessman in Thailand is murdered. All of these murders are somehow tied to the Hasidic community of Crown Heights.

An ancient story is unfolding. The ancient story is the legend of the "lamad vav", the thirty-six righteous men. Each of these men had performed an unusually good deed.

Now people are dying because of a bizarre legend threatening an outcome that mankind has feared for thousands of years.

But how is Will's wife, Beth, involved in this legend? And will Will and TC find her before she too becomes a victim of this legend?