WHY IS FRANCIS X. LENIHAN SKULKING AROUND HOPEVILE, the tent city on the banks of the Mississippi at St. Louis? No, he’s not trying to serve a summons, he’s looking for an answer as to why his card was found in the pocket of a young homeless man who died in this camp. It’s a mystery that Francis wants solved and so does Dr. Lambert, the father of the deceased and Francis’ new benefactor. Lambert has hired Francis and his partner, Cale Twohey, to look into his son’s last months at Hopeville and what a gaggle of odd ducks they meet—ragged, forlorn indigents that society has scorned, a foot fetishist named Jesus, and Jacob Vorhof, The Soup Man, a stuttering psychopath whose choice of lethal weapon is a stash of opioids.