Ricky Durrutti is a petty criminal with a short biography and a long rap sheet. He's also a dead man unless he can trace Jimmy Ramirez, the guy he gave his gun to - a gun it turns out was later used to kill a cop which has put Durrutti in the frame for murder. Set in the murky streets of San Francisco's Mission District, this is the crowning work in Plate's 'Mission Quartet', four novels of petty crime and petty criminal justice that vividly bring alive the world of petty crime and petty criminal justice so often visited by such writers as Nelson Algren and Charles Bukowski.