In this literary departure from a detective-procedural novel, a former police officer finds no sanctuary from risk and moral uncertainty after a police shooting goes horribly wrong. He is pulled out of the bureaucratic shell he has been hiding in ever since as he attempts to solve the unexplained death of a populist television reporter he admires. In the process, he is forced to confront his past, his values, his ethics, and the escapist life he has created for himself by his immersion in art appreciation. As the story unfolds, a chance meeting causes the investigator to weigh rekindling a romance with a painter he dated in college. Their later encounters compel him to examine his failing marriage, and her to confront the loss of her marijuana-smuggling husband, and her stunted art which, like her, has become frozen in grief. Meanwhile, the husband of the dead reporter, a state assemblyman, finds it increasingly difficult to remain sequestered in mourning, as questions about his involvement in her death increase. The story crosses northern California, from the back streets of San Jose, to the halls of power in Sacramento, to a sleepy fishing village on the north coast. Any reader who has ever faced an ethical dilemma, or striven to find a balance between an artistic and a conventional life, the internal and the external world, will find much to enjoy in this darkly whimsical collage of love, art, politics and betrayal.