Paul Benjamin was an ordinary New Yorker until a gang of drug addicts killed his wife and raped his daughter. When the police proved helpless, Benjamin bought a gun and sought vengeance, methodically tracking down the addicts and killing them.

On his first night, after having moved to Chicago, he stumbles out of a bar in a bad part of town, pretending to be drunk. When two thugs set upon him, they find their quarry sober and armed. He kills them both, beginning a new cycle of violence.

Written by the Edgar Award–winning author as “penance” for the glamorization of violence in the successful 1974 film adaptation starring Charles Bronson, this sequel shows the self-destructive consequences of taking the law into one’s own hands.