Deepest winter. Darkest Philadelphia. A murder shocks the frozen city - the most spectacular homicide in its 300-year-old history: an ex-cop has been lured to the basement of an abandoned chapel, wrapped in barbed wire - and kept alive for ten days. Twenty-four hours after the discovery, Detectives Kevin Byrne and Jessica Balzano find another victim in another church, encased in a pristine block of ice. Someone is transforming the city's cathederals into killing rooms, someone who is determined to raise hell on earth.