Former lovers and now academic rivals, Matt Mattison and Susan Arnot are eminently respected in archaeological circles. When an old Harvard mentor sends them a 25-year-old Neanderthal skull, they embrace the opportunity to study this creature thought to be extinct.

Priscilla Bollingsworth, a young, ambitious female NYPD detective, investigates the killing of a powerful newspaper editor. She teams up with Jude Hurley, a clever, rebellious reporter, and together they navigate the ink-infested waters whose denizens include the paper's resentful old guard, scheming careerists, a bumbling publisher, a steely executive editor, and a rival newspaper tycoon named Lester Moloch. But the waters thicken considerably when...