From the back of the book:
Haunted by the unsolved slayings of his wife and young daughter, and tormented by his sense of guilt, former New York City detective Charlie "Bird" Parker is a man consumed by violence, regret and the desire for revenge.
Then Bird's ex-partner asks him to track down a missing girl and Bird embarks on an odyssey that is to lead him into the bowels of organized crime; to an old black woman who dwells by the Luisiana swamps; to cellars of torture and death; and to a serial killer unlike any other, an artist who uses the human body as his canvas and takes faces as his prize, a killer known only as The Travelling Man.