"As a boy, William Bellman commits one small, cruel act: the killing of a rook with his catapult, which is soon forgotten amidst the riot of boyhood games, but which will have unforeseen and terrible consequences. And by the time he is grown, with a wife and children of his own, he seems indeed to be a man blessed by fortune - until tragedy strikes, and the stranger in black comes, and William starts to wonder if all his happiness is about to be eclipsed. Desperate to save the one precious thing he has left, he enters into a rather odd bargain, with an even odder partner, to found a decidedly macabre business. And Bellman & Black is born" --Publisher description.