East Long Beach. The LAPD is barely keeping up with the high crime rate. Murders go unsolved, OAPs are getting hoodwinked, children are missing. But word has spread: if you've got a case the police can't or won't touch, Isaiah Quintabe will help you out.
They call him IQ. He's a loner and a high school dropout, his unassuming nature disguising a relentless determination and a fierce intelligence. He charges his clients whatever they can afford, which might be a set of tyres or some homemade muffins. But now he needs a client who can pay. And the only way to that client is through a jive-talking low-life drug dealer he thought he'd left behind. Then there's the case itself. A drug-addled rap star surrounded by a crew of flunkies who believes his life is in danger, a hit man who even other hit men say is a lunatic, and a monster killer dog. If he solves this case, IQ can put right a mistake he made long ago. If he doesn't, it won't just be the hit man coming after him....