Vancouver's "Sunshine Coast" is one of Canada's famous beautyspots, but as fans of LR Wright's books know, it harbors eleventyseven versions of crazy. On offer here is the adolescent variety: Eliot Gardener is maddeningly sullen as only an angry fourteenyearold can be. He's also, apparently, a doublemurderer, having whacked both of his parents with a machete. There's little question that Eliot did the deed, but for Sergeant Karl Alberg it feels like a personal failure: The Coast is his patch, and he should have seen the trouble coming. He's getting ready to marry his longtime sweetheart, but the guilt is poisoning his joy – so much so that when a second killer seems to have Alberg in his sights, the threat feels almost justified.

It's sunny days for Staff Sergeant Karl Alberg, even as everyone else in Canada is shivering. The magnificent Cassandra Mitchell, who has a disconcerting habit of disappearing from both the town of Sechelt and Alberg's bed, has appeared once again. And though Alberg is effectively the police chief, the most pressing thing on his desk right now is the spunky old lady who has apparently absconded from her retirement home—most likely, it's widely believed, in search of a good martini. But a storm is brewing for Alberg, just a few miles down the peninsula. Zoe Strachan was an angry child, and she's grown into an angry, if eerily seductive woman. Over the years, she has built up elaborate structures to contain her anger, but now those structures have been shattered. A refugee from big-city policing, Alberg thinks he's seen it all. But he's not even going to know what hit him.