Milo once had a thriving divorce-case business in the small town of Meriwether, in the Pacific Northwest, but because of liberal new divorce laws, he has taken to drinking and staring out the window. He's up to the third drink of the morning when an attractive young woman walks into his office and asks him to find her brother. He takes on what seems a routine missing-person case in hopes of getting to know her better, but finds himself involved in what is most definitely the wrong case. Everyone is a victim, one way or another, of a crime that took place long before the novel begins.