Dave Robichaud, a New Orleans police detective, was wounded in a recent shooting. In the hospital, he is visited by a local singer, a young Creole, who tells Dave that some dangerous people are threatening her. Or maybe the detective simply imagined this visit under the influence of painkillers? After all, everyone in the city knows that the girl has been missing for a long time... And soon her sister’s corpse is found on the shore, frozen in a block of ice. Together with private detective Clete Purcell - a drunkard, a brawler and his best friend - Dave is looking for the truth among the swamps, canals, towns and private estates of Louisiana, where there are predators much more dangerous than crocodiles...