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Chief Jim Hopper reveals long-awaited secrets to Eleven about his old life as a police detective in New York City, confronting his past before the events of the hit show Stranger Things.

Christmas, Hawkins, 1984. All Chief Jim Hopper wants is to enjoy a quiet first Christmas with Eleven, but his adopted daughter has other plans. Over Hopper´s protests, she pulls a cardboard box marked "New York" out of the basement-and the tough questions begin. Why did Hopper leave Hawkins all those years ago? What does "Vietnam" mean? And why has he never talked about New York?

Although he´d rather face a horde of demogorgons than talk about his own past, Hopper knows that he can´t deny the truth any longer. And so begins the story of the incident in New York-the last big case before everything changed. . . .

Summer, New York City, 1977. Hopper is starting over after returning home from Vietnam. A young daughter, a caring wife, and a new beat as an NYPD detective make it easy to slip back into life as a civilian. But after shadowy federal agents suddenly show up and seize the files about a series of brutal, unsolved murders, Hopper takes matters into his own hands, risking everything to discover the truth.

Soon Hopper is undercover among New York´s notorious street gangs. But just as he´s about to crack the case, a blackout rolls across the boroughs, plunging Hopper into a darkness deeper than any he´s faced before.

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Adam Christopher´s debut novel, Empire State, was SciFiNow´s Book of the Year and a Financial Times Book of the Year. His other novels include Seven Wonders, Hang Wire, The Burning Dark, and the Ray Electromatic Mysteries series. A contributor to the internationally bestselling Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View fortieth-anniversary anthology, Christopher has also written the official tie-in novels for the hit CBS television show Elementary and the award-winning Dishonored vieogame franchise and, with Chuck Wendig, wrote The Shield for Dark Circle/Archie Comics. Born in New Zealand, Christopher has lived in Great Britain since 2006.

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