Life’s tough for a Gypsy cop in Budapest. The cops don’t trust you because you’re a Gypsy. Your fellow Gypsies shun you because you’re a cop. The dead, however, don’t care. So when Balthazar Kovacs, a murder squad detective, gets a mysterious message from a blocked number he gulps his morning coffee, grabs his police ID and goes to work. This book reveals an underworld that Budapest visitors never get to see: the gritty back-alleys of District VIII; the endemic corruption that reaches deep into the government as officials and their business allies plunder state coffers at will; a rule of law bent to serve the interests of the rich, the rising power of international organized crime gangs; and the ghosts of Communism and Nazism that still haunt Hungary.