Recovering alcoholic Bruce Kohler and his friends, computer geek Jimmy and incurable codependent Barbara, take shares in a clean and sober group house in a Long Island resort community known locally as Deadhampton. Things turn lethal when the tide washes in the body of their beautiful housemate Clea. The cops don’t think it was murder. But Clea was an investigative journalist whose passions included environmental issues and more than her share of boyfriends. And one free spirit’s passions may be somebody else’s motive for murder. Soon Bruce and his friends are up to their necks in sleuthing. His housemates and the crowd staying with a clean and sober playboy in a big house on the dunes claim recovery from drug, love, and sex addictions, compulsive overeating, bulimia, and anorexia as well as alcoholism. But somebody's not abstaining from murder. As the summer heats up, secrets and lies start buzzing around this dream vacation like flies at a picnic on the beach.

Sober alcoholic Bruce Kohler discovers that there’s a lot more to recovery than putting down the booze. With his friends, Jimmy the computer wiz and Barbara the world-class co-dependent, he gets drawn into investigating the murder of a suspected drug dealer and rehab graduate whose attractive girlfriend, Luz, is the prime suspect.But Bruce’s love addiction really kicks in when he takes up with his ex-wife again. Laura is fragile, compelling, and bent on self-destruction. In comparison, going after the murder suspects—a dysfunctional Italian family, a drug kingpin, and a motley crew of the victim’s rehab buddies—is a healthy agenda.The chase takes Bruce and his friends to a funeral in Brooklyn, an Italian bakery, an upscale lingerie boutique, a SoHo art gallery, and the church basements of AA.