Retribution

Christmas Day isn’t being kind to D.C. Homicide Vice detective Hardesty. Called to a crime scene at the Georgetown University boathouse on the Potomac River, he is taken aback at seeing the face under the ice of a man he only hours earlier was partying with at an exclusive, full-service gay male brothel. Immediately thereafter identifying a body in a Mercedes in the boathouse’s parking lot as a rent-boy from the previous evening, who Hardesty has known (biblically) himself, the plot thickens as the Secret Service descends on the boathouse looking for someone else altogether. A very important and very secret personage, the owner of the Mercedes, is missing. It’s going to be a very busy Christmas week for Hardesty, not just in trying to solve a murder mystery against the opposition and possible complicity of the Russian mafia and the U.S. government itself, but also in keeping his own connection to the male brothel under wraps.