Unhappily retired, uneasy with newly inherited wealth, the former Jerusalem CID chief wants nothing more than to be left alone. But the system won't let him be. Emotionally blackmailed by the new minister of police, Cohen reluctantly undertakes a search for Simon Levi-Tsur, the psychologically disturbed heir to the House of Levi-Tsur banking family.

The search at first seems routine, an easy if tedious job for any veteran detective. But the tracks lead from Tel Aviv's decadent night life to the most extreme of the Jewish settlements of the West Bank, past the Western Wall of Solomon's Temple and into the Judean desert.

From drug dealers to semiprofessional call girls, from mystics to political thugs, the clues take Cohen from the secular underworld of Tel Aviv into the no less secret - and dangerous - underworld of the Jewish extremists in Jerusalem. On the way, he is brought face to face with his own failures, both present and past, and in the process he reveals dangerous secrets that threaten not only the powerful banking family but also the newborn peace process between Israel and the Arab world.