Convalescing after suffering a gunshot wound, Detective Lieutenant Jack Stryker and his girlfriend are spending two weeks in the Blackwater Bay area of the Great Lakes. But when a body washes ashore, Jack is obliged to get out of his hammock and help the local sheriff find the killer.

A pleasant resort town in the Great Lakes area becomes the scene for murder once again during the annual Halloween carnival. The murder is linked to a fatal car crash involving an old friend of the sheriff's whose puzzling dying words told of a long-ago tragedy. With the help of a young lawyer and his girlfriend, Sheriff Matt Gabriel uncovers a number of treacherous town secrets. National pubicity.

When Sheriff Gabriel discovers a New York ex-convict's corpse in Blackwater Bay, he worries that the press will invade his quiet hometown, but when a local schoolgirl suddenly disappears as well, he realizes that greater evils are afoot.

'Gosling writes fiendishly and writes angelically' - SUNDAY TIMES 'Ingenious plotting...procedural detaail to rival Ed McBain and a slam-bang solution' - LITERARY REVIEW Laura Brandon didn't want to work for her uncle, so she recommended her friend Julie for the job of physiotherapist at the exclusive Mountview Clinic. A few months later Julie is brutally murdered in the woods that surround the clinic. Laura, tinged with guilt, wants to find out why - so she offers herself as Julie's replacement. As Laura and Sheriff Matt Gabriel struggle to find leads, ex-cop Tom Gilliam, a patient embittered, skilled, and rude enough to put his nose where it shouldn't be, agrees to help. Then there's another murder, eerily similar to the first...