In the tradition of Ed McBain, a gritty police procedural adapted to a Harvey Chalmers type hometown America. When a strange and troubled young woman stumbles bloodily to her death in a small Upstate New York village full of the usual suspects, Assistant District Attorney Jack Hughes, ordinarily assigned to prosecute routine traffic tickets, finds himself enmeshed in a murder investigation, exposing him to a colorful cast of characters on both sides of the law and a remarkable defense lawyer whose beauty is only exceeded by her ambition, and who is at once much more and much less than she seems. Jack's scuba diving trip to Maine with Sheriff's Investigator Bull Heimlich leads to the simultaneous unraveling of a 30 year old mystery linked in a strange sort of way to the great events of July 1969 when men from the planet Earth first stepped foot on the surface of the moon.