For Detective Paul Turner of the Chicago Police Department, tbe new year could not have begun on a more inauspicious note. First, an argument with his lover Ben on New Year's Eve, and now, on one of the coldest days of the season, a corpse found in an alleyway. To make matters worse, the corpse is that of Albert Meade, fiercely conservative federal judge and notorious homophobe, who recently ruled to uphold local anti-gay legislation. With Meade's judicial record and the fact that his body was found near the gay dance club Au Naturel, Turner and his partner, Detective Buck Fenwick, suspect there might be some connection, a suspicion that deepens when witnesses place Meade inside Au Naturel the night of his death. But Turner's friends and contacts in the gay community are of little use - Meade's death caused them little sorrow - and Meade himself was supposed to have been out of town. As Turner works to unravel the tangled threads of the murder, he soon suspects that the solution to the crime lies far too close to home...