As Canadian police detective Staff Sergeant Karl Alberg investigates the disappearance of Charlie O'Brea, young drugstore worker Eddie Addison's obsession with a pretty student leads to a downward spiral of violence.

Karl Alberg used to be a big-city cop solving crimes involving gangsters, drug lords, real low-lifes. He can't possibly be stumped by a murder in small town? But he is. The woman was found propped against a tree, her pretty face scrubbed clean, and her slender neck slit from one side to the other. And that is all anyone can tell Alberg. Her name? Not so much. So Alberg hires a local artist to draw her picture; maybe someone will recognize her…without, you know, the sliced-up neck. It's a brilliant idea. The answers pour in. And they all point to one potential suspect.

British Columbia's Sunshine Coast isn't always so sunny for Staff Sergeant Karl Alberg. Although Alberg is effectively the police chief, the most pressing thing on his desk right now is the spunky old lady who has apparently escaped from her retirement home. Zoe Strachan has a comfortable house, built on British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast: secluded, private, far away from the past she has left behind. Beautiful and enigmatic, Zoe has no friends and ­seemingly ­no family. Until her brother shows up one day and threatens to reveal the secret she thought was buried forever.

To Karl Alberg a quiet coastal town is exactly what he needs to soothe a psyche that's been battered by big-city police work. But this gentle paradise has more than its share of secrets. Bees buzz among the roses, and the local librarian is attractive, intriguing, and unattached. Perhaps he has at last come in from the cold. But a murder in small town can conceal a lot of secrets—some of them bleak enough to make a man yearn for some nice straightforward urban crime.

When George Abbershaw is invited to Black Dudley Manor for the weekend, he has only one thing on his mind - proposing to Meggie Oliphant. Unfortunately for George, things don't quite go according to plan. A harmless game turns decidedly deadly and suspicions of murder take precedence over matrimony. Trapped in a remote country house with a murderer, George can see no way out. But Albert Campion can.