Harry Lyon is a cop who embraces tradition and order. He likes everything in his life to be neat and clean from his immaculate condominium to his well-tailored clothes to his homicide case files, free of typing errors. The bane of his life is his partner, Connie Gulliver. He doesn't like the way she dresses for work, the messiness of her desk, her lack of manners or her sometimes casual attitude toward the law. She says its the Age of Chaos in a modern world and he ought to get with it - and he loathes that attitude. But when Harry and Connie have to take out a hopped-up gunman in a crowded restaurant, the chase and shootout degenerate into a surreal nightmare that seems to justify Connie's world view.On his way back to the office to write up his report, a hulking denizen of the streets dressed in filthy rags tells him, "Tick-tock, tick-tock. You'll be dead in sixteen hours." Until dawn the next day Harry struggles to regain his neat orderly life but is instead caught in an undertow of terror and violence. Someone's after him for reasons he doesn't understand and he must come to terms with the chaotic modern world if he is to save Connie, the people he loves and himself. Cover art by Graham Potts.