Based on the true story...

Detective Colin Fitzgerald, only recently returned from World War I, with scars inside and out, is back in New Orleans and chasing the killer the newspapers call The Axman, a ruthless predator who has plagued the city for years, breaking into people's homes in the middle of the night and murdering them in their beds.

The killer even writes a letter to a local newspaper--echoing Jack the Ripper from three decades earlier--and claims to be a "demon from hell."

The top brass at the Police Department says the killer is a madman, but Colin suspects there is more to these brutal killings than madness, perhaps much more.

Yet even Colin is shocked when he discovers the murders are linked to City Hall and a vast corruption scheme, with roots that reach back decades, to the assassination of a legendary police chief and to the murder of Colin's own father, the former chief of detectives.