Stabbed, beaten, strangled, drowned. Sometimes people get exactly what they deserve.
Cal Meany is a cheat, a poacher, an abusive father and an adulterous husband. So nobody is that surprised when Kate Shugak finds his body floating in the bay. What is surprising is that the corpse has been beaten, stabbed, strangled and drowned.
Meany's happily bereaved wife and children are prime suspects. Then again, so are most of his neighbours. But when Meany's daughte is murdered, and her lover disappears, Kate begins to think that this unusual crime may not be so readily solved.