In downtown Manhattan, workers on a construction site breach a long-forgotten basement, unearthing a charnel house: thirty-six bodies, systematically dismembered and carefully immured at least 130 years ago.It's just the kind of case to intrigue theunorthodox and enigmatic FBI agent Aloysius X.L. Pendergast. But he's not the only interested party. Soon after the bodies are discovered a killer strikes. Their victim's corpse bears the same precise mutilations as the bodies in the basement.The nightmare has begun. Again.