It's midsummer in British Columbia, and it's hot. Murderously hot, as RCMP Staff Sergeant Karl Alberg finds when his day at the beach with his ex is cut short by the discovery of a fresh corpse. And back in Sechelt, a nuisance call from an eccentric redneck swiftly leads Alberg into a psychological Gordian knot and a second crime a decade old.

Redneck Herman Ferguson is unkempt, unpleasant, and possibly dangerous. His long-suffering wife wants nothing to do with his assortment of caged wild animals, concentrating instead on feeding the kids and dodging blows. But Herman has it in for another misfit--a mumbling elderly woman who lives alone with innumerable cats. And the wife, well, she has it bad for Bobby Ransome, a muscular, charismatic high school dropout and ex-con.

In her masterful style, award-winning author L.R. Wright weaves a chilling tale of jealousy, gossip, and the tangled affairs of young men and women who loved one another long ago. And she shows once again why her mysteries have been praised as "every bit as good as the novels of Ruth Rendell and P D James" by People magazine.