Deadline

Edgar Award Finalist: During his first day at a new job, a veteran journalist is drawn into a strange closed society.

After years of churning out copy as a newspaper reporter, Dalton Walker still can’t resist a fire. When a circus tent goes up in smoke, seventeen are killed, and one body in particular draws his attention: a little girl, charred beyond recognition. The adult that brought her there must have survived, but no one comes forward to claim the body. Why? It is a strange case, and the more Walker digs, the stranger it becomes.

At the same time, his new editor hands him a fluff piece—a profile of something New York City has never seen before: an Amish Rockette. As Walker investigates how a girl who was taught that dancing is a sin could have found her way to Radio City Music Hall, he begins to suspect that her apparent fear of reporters is more than just shyness. Danger surrounds the dancer, who is learning that life on the kickline can be just as perilous as a circus-tent fire.