Magic Hour tracks Long Island police lieutenant Stephen Edward Brady as he seeks the killer of movie mogul Sy Spencer. Aside from Steve's profession, it is as far from the usual police procedural as a novel with a mystery plot can be.

Steve Brady himself has a collection of partially healed neuroses. A veteran of Vietnam, he spent fourteen years in the Suffolk County Police Department before he drunkenly took a shot at a fellow officer's side mirror. The department sent him to a tony treatment center and took him back afterwards, but he had to start at the bottom of the ranks again. As the book opens, Steve is a reasonably stable and happy man. But he does not clearly remember a stretch of many months of his past, a blur of endless drinks and casual pick-ups. This becomes significant later in the story as...