Frank ciardi has become an anachronism. a top detective in post-war san francisco, the mid-eighties finds him fallen on hard times. depressed over the re-election of reagan and the growing number of homeless outside his market street office window, he's wondering if life has passed him by. "like the single apple that wouldn't fall from the tree, i hang rotting in winter," he tells himself. but maybe the world needs an old-fashioned guy like him and just doesn't know it. "there's no more damsels and no more knights," she told him. "except for you. i guess you must have been asleep when they announced the game of romance was over." when a mousy-looking woman in a frumpy dress came tapping at the pebbled glass of his office door, frank thought it would be a simple and quick case that would keep him fortified with cheap rye on his spiral of self-destruction. he couldn't have been more wrong on all accounts. but then how was he to know she was the devil incarnate and had come to try and make him her patsy?