Blues singer Buddy Blaine is overjoyed with his summer gig at Tuffy's on the beach strip. In exchange for performing two sets a day, he's awarded room and board, a few hundred bucks a week, and the attention of 40-something Beach Strip celebrity Josie Marshall. Plus the friendship of gorgeous and soon-to-be wealthy Abby Bergen, star of Tuffy's beach volleyball team.

But when Abby is found in Buddy's room garroted with a string from his guitar, his sunny world turns dark and dangerous. Especially when homicide detective Drew Deforest, who has all the grace of a hungry pit bull, leads the murder investigation.

Deforest and his team find themselves dealing with a cast of characters that includes Tuffy's hot-shot manager, an infatuated witness to Abby's impromptu strip-tease performances, a shady night watchman, and various others. Then, like it or not, Josie Marshall becomes entangled in the investigation and an unexpected romance.

The tension climaxes with a midnight conflagration and a stunning solution to the mystery. Or, as one of Buddy's original tunes puts it:

Terror we expect
But love always takes us
By surprise...

In this third book of the Beach Series, John Lawrence Reynolds brings down the house on one of the finest Canadian crime series in decades.