A psychedelic romance in a city on the verge of disaster.
In modern Philadelphia, where a deep economic depression has left the city near collapse and most of its inhabitants in gruesome poverty, Mitchell Gray, a twenty-year-old graduate student in a beleaguered university physics department, spends most of his time playing piano and touring the city’s worst slums in stolen cars. He is a technical virtuoso whose scientific ideas challenge the foundations of his field but he lives in hiding from one of the world's most powerful billionaires who is obsessed with Mitchell and determined to capitalize on his strange inventions.
When he falls in love with an older woman, the wife of a wealthy pharmaceutical executive, their relationship inspires him with a mad plan to use his creations to change the world. With the help of a brilliant and neurotic chemistry student named Charlie Nolan and technology so advanced that it resembles magic, Mitchell devises horrifying yet harmless schemes and supernatural hoaxes, causing an uproar in the city.
His nights as a modern day robin hood also raise the alarm of some of the real monsters in Philadelphia, including a mysterious child murderer rumored to possess supernatural powers, known only as "The Demon." Christopher Rankin's debut novel is a haunting story of love, friendship and survival in a world of revolution.