Margrit Knight is a young lawyer who likes to take chances. One chance she loves taking is going for a run through Central Park after dark. She is a fast, strong runner and she figures she can outrun any would be assailants. She is more than a little perturbed when a strange man has the audacity to speak to her as she is jogging. She then finds out that a man matching his description is a suspect in the murder of a woman in the park. He next approaches her at a dance club, startling her badly. But before she can summon help, he vanishes. The cops, including her on again, off again boyfriend Tony, can't figure out how he managed to get out of the club without appearing on the security cameras. Still at the club, after the police have left, the man, Alban Korund, again approaches her and claims that he was not the murderer and that he needs her help. Before he can say much more, Tony shows up and scares him off.
Margrit gets involved in a squatter case that sets a powerful man against her. This man sends an assassin after Margrit but Alban swoops in and rescues her. She is knocked out and Alban carries her off to his apartment. Once she awakens, he reveals the that he isn't human, he's a gargoyle. He can switch back and forth between looking human and looking stony. He's big and strong and fast and he has wings and can fly, but only at night. During daylight, he is changed to real stone and frozen that way till sundown. And he still wants Margrit's help in proving his innocence.
In the course of their investigation, Margrit learns that, before humankind, there were five races of beings; dragons, vampires, djinn, selkies, and gargoyles. These "old races" are all in decline because of humanity. In fact, the woman who brought the squatter case to Margrit is one of the old races, a selkie. The man who owns the building concerned turns out to be a vampire. His hired guns who tried to run over Margrit are a dragon and a djinn. Seems like there is a lot going on in New York that humans are completely unaware of.
A lot of this book didn't make much sense to me. Why would a powerful property owner bother to have some small-time lawyer killed just because she was trying to get an injunction against have an old building torn down? If big time developers killed everyone who sued them, the bodies would be knee deep. It was also rather contrived that Margrit would be approached by a selkie at the same time she was introduced to the gargoyle. Another thing that bothered me was that the sexual tension between Margrit and the gargoyle, Alban, is never resolved. I figure it is a hook to draw the reader into the second novel, House of Cards. Although there are few minor threads left hanging, the main one is that Alban and Margrit never get together, even though Margrit's tongue is practically dangling on her chest every time she and Alban are in the same room. I just didn't find this first book in this trilogy, titled The Negotiator, that interesting.
Review by Publishers Weekly.
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