Helen Bradley's latest writing assignment takes her away from her new husband to a charming coastal town on the Long Beach Peninsula of Washington State, where she's to finish assembling a regional travel guide. Arriving at the quaint bed and breakfast where she will stay for the next two weeks, Helen learns why the guidebook's original author, Isabelle Dupont, couldn't complete the project she's dead.

Emily Merritt, Helen's host at the bed and breakfast, insists it was writing the guidebook that got Isabelle killed. Helen suspects that Isabelle stumbled onto some illegal activity, and to keep her quiet, someone staged the accident that killed her. When a local fisherman who may know the mystery behind Isabelle's death disappears at sea, Helen teams up with a Coast Guard investigator to find some answers.

With the fisherman's dark secret buried in the treacherous waters off the cape, Helen must decide if her determination will solve the crime, or make her the sea's next victim-