Harry and Cat are steady customers at Gretchen's Kitchen, a shabby, pleasant restaurant where Cat can warm her scarred body by the woodstove and Harry can slump in a booth, drink Gretchen's $4 a gallon wine, and contemplate the folly of his declining years. They're existential drifters, content to let life take the line of least resistance.So when Gretchen asks Harry to do her a favor and help her dying friend, Eva, he at first declines. But he's cursed with an overactive curiosity, and he visits Eva to see what there is to see. He learns that Eva's husband, Frank, was found dead of a heart attack ten years ago, but she's sure that's not what happened as Frank was a very healthy fellow.Enticed by Eva's $5,000 reward offer, Harry and Cat team up with her granddaughter, Priscilla Matson, a diminutive bodybuilder with a nine pound mouth and an aversion to cats.They travel central New Hampshire seeking answers. They learn that another man went missing around the same time as Frank's death and suspect a connection. Harry bribes a policewoman, robs a funeral home, and makes an error in judgment that has horrific consequences.They carry on, getting ever closer to the truth until finally, in a subterranean hell, they find it in a soul-ripping encounter with horror and death.