The "hollow ghost" haunting Chicago P.I. Malachy "Mal" Foley's dreams is Lammy Fleming, one of Mal's high school classmates. Mal, a new kid in school, had befriended Lammy at first, but Lammy was slow, chubby, bad at schoolwork, and terrible at sports, and he was the target of taunting and worse by the other boys at St. Robert's. Eventually, swayed by the cutthroat crowd of adolescent boys, Mal found himself unwilling to challenge the pack by championing such an unpopular boy. The way Mal turned his back on Lammy, the way Lammy became an invisible boy, has haunted Mal for more than twenty years. Now Lammy has been accused of assaulting a young girl in his neighborhood, and though the legal case against him is slim, the neighbors have already tried the case. Lammy is facing harassment, vandalism, and threats of worse. Mal's conscience has decided that clearing Lammy's name and protecting him against attack will lay Mal's guilt to rest. But challenging the girl's story - and her...

Two years ago, Father Michael Nolan was sued by the family of a seventeen-year-old girl who had committed suicide years ago after confessing to having an affair with Father Nolan. The lawsuit was thrown out, but all of Michael's secrets came out, resulting in the end of his life as a priest and ruining his relationship with his niece, Kirsten. Michael and Kirsten, a private investigator and the lead character along with her lawyer husband, Dugan, a lawyer, of David J. Walker's acclaimed Wild Onion mystery series, were quite close, especially after Michael helped her out of a big jam when she was in college, and Kirsten is devastated by the revelations about her uncle. She still feels obligated to him, though, after everything they've been through together, and when a list of priests who have been accused of abuse appears in the Chicago newspaper, she is sympathetic. Unlike Dugan, who defended him against the lawsuit but since then would rather have less than nothing to do...