Tres Navarre, private eye and sometimes English professor, is hoping for a laid-back working vacation when he accepts a teaching gig at the University of Texas at Austin, even if it means shacking up for six weeks with his big brother Garrett, who calls Austin home.

Garrett Navarre - computer programmer extraordinaire, Jimmy Buffett fanatic, and all-around eccentric - is hoping to retire a multimillionaire thanks to a high-tech start-up company he and two buddies have launched. Garrett has bet everything from his career to the Navarre family ranch that the company will stay alive long enough to make a public stock offering, allowing him to ride the Austin high-tech boom right into the saddle of luxury.

Both Tres's and Garrett's hopes are shattered with a single gunshot. Garrett's oldest friend and business partner ends up murdered at his lakefront home - and Garrett is the only suspect.

As Tres delves into Garrett's bizarre world to find the truth behind the murder, he comes face-to-face with the damaged relationships, violent lives, and billion-dollar schemes of a brave new high-tech world.

Among the players: a corporate takeover artist with a trail of broken enemies in his wake and an overzealous desire to make Garrett's company his own; the victim's wife, a hard-edged beauty haunted by three generations of family failure; and the head of an oil-rich clan with more power than morals and enough skeletons in the closet to man a ghost ship. Connecting them all - the beautiful waters of Lake Travis and an unspeakable evil that lies within its depths.