The drug is called Lingo, and it’s the most powerful narcotic Lenore has ever seen. This cheaply manufactured pill races straight for the brain’s language center, supercharging it so that even a dimwitted person can speak and read at 1,500 words per minute. It induces giddiness, confidence, and sexual euphoria - with a side effect of murderous rage. The drug has come to Quinsigamond, a fading industrial center in the heart of Massachusetts, and it’s going to tear this town apart.
Amid the post industrial decay of Quinsigamond glitters a fabulous jewel - Herzog's Erotic Palace - America's most lavish porn theatre and a gangland laundry for semi-sour cash. But most of all, Herzog's is the place where dreamers meet, seductive nightmares find their dazzling realization, and a former triple X film director, a ruthless gangster, and photographer's son dangerously cross paths.
“Vealshank” Tani’s life ends in an abandoned train station. The killers don’t just torture Tani, they skin him and hang him from a steal beam as a treat for the carrion eaters. This grisly scene wouldn’t matter to Gilrein, a cabbie who knows to mind his own business, except that he spent the evening as Tani’s chauffeur. Whether he knows anything or not, his life is now a liability to August Kroger, kingpin and rare-book addict—and enemies of Kroger do not live long.