<p>Three young women have been brutally assaulted and murdered in the city of Philadelphia. Lieutenant William Fogarty a time-toughened cop hardened by personal tragedy is shocked by the brutality of the crimes. His only lead comes from medical examiner Josef Tanaka. Half Japanese and half American Tanaka a skilled practitioner of the martial arts claims to recognize the method used in the attacks: a karate strike known as <i>nukite</i> or spear hand. Fogarty has nowhere else to turn.</p><p>An unlikely combination Fogarty and Tanaka forced together by circumstance and neither completely trusting the other conduct a desperate hunt trawling the city streets of Philadelphia and into the dangerous underbelly of the killing arts. </p><p>Pursuing the Mantis a creature who uses the flesh of his victims in a sadistic macabre ritual of self-purification Fogarty and Tanaka endanger the lives of those closest to them as they inch perilously close to the precipice of their own worst fears and weaknesses.</p>