Unholy Fire

John "Kit" McKittredge is a young Union officer from Maine who is terribly wounded in one of the first battles of the Civil War. Still unfit for active duty after nine months in the hospital, he is recruited by an unorthodox colonel named Valentine Burdette to work in the Provost Marshal General's Department in Washington.

The beleaguered capital, now swollen to seven times its prewar population, is filled with saloons, brothels, spies, thieves, and murderers. It is also rife with official ...