Felonious Monk

Beneath Buddhist prayer flags, a reporter is found dead at dawn on a Vermont ashram. Summoned by an old friend who runs a silent retreat, astrologer Axel Crowe arrives to assess the situation. Within hours, the police arrest his friend for murder.

Believing him innocent, Crowe suspects instead a mysterious devotee who may be ex-CIA, and the beautiful Thai woman who accompanied him to the retreat. But when Crowe follows them to New York, the woman disappears and the man threatens to make Crowe disappear.

Seeking background on the pair, Crowe calls in a favor from an NYPD detective, who asks for help in return. A man dubbed the Riverside Rapist has murdered eight Asian women in 12 years. Intrigued by the astrological pattern of a serial killer, Crowe agrees to take a look.

Coincidence or not, the cold case file overlaps some of the stories the murdered reporter was working on – sex trafficking, heroin smuggling and the theft of religious antiquities – all from Southeast Asia.

When Crowe goes to Thailand looking for answers, he finds more than he anticipated – a convoluted history of conspiracy, crime and karma – that very nearly gets him killed.

Back in New York, Crowe leans on doors that now open to further revelations. Doubted by the police, he follows a trail of evidence on his own to a final confrontation with the perpetrators, where it all comes together to make perfect, horrible, sense.