Jim McPherson is an architect, no longer young but still quietly ambitious. He watches with acid distaste as each new outrageous, extravagant, willfully transgressive building gets all the publicity, and wonders-how the hell did this happen? Then he finds himself designing one of his own.An old acquaintance, now a mysterious, manipulative figure of great means and even greater will, has drawn him into a project that promises to violate every principle...