On a bitterly cold morning, the body of a reporter with a troubled past is found on the deserted beach underneath an amusement pier. In spite of his misgivings, small-town attorney Ned Johnston agrees to investigate the reporter's death. With little more to go on than a cryptic series of letters and numbers on a page torn from a notepad, Johnston begins to uncover a shadowy and far-reaching criminal conspiracy.
Meanwhile, Johnston is confronted by a series of strangers demanding to know the whereabouts of the elusive and mysterious investigator, Sophia Ambrosetti. Johnston soon finds himself being drawn into one of Ambrosetti's dubious undertakings - an attempt to obtain a cache of stolen information from a cagey and desperate source. It quickly becomes apparent that other parties also are on the trail of the stolen information.
Amidst the holiday festivities in Oceanic Park, the death toll increases as shadowy forces act with ruthless efficiency to eliminate anyone who poses a threat to them. As the pace of events accelerates, Johnston struggles to expose the hidden forces at work in Oceanic Park before he becomes their next victim.
As the temperature rises, so do the stakes.
In the summer of 2005, the beach town of Oceanic Park is roiled by anti-immigrant tensions. A group calling itself the Oceanic Park Vigilantes is conducting an anti-immigrant flyering campaign, and an abrasive talk-show host named Walter Braddock is using his show as a platform for spreading inflammatory anti-immigrant rhetoric.
When a migrant worker is brutally murdered, a member of the Oceanic Park Vigilantes is charged with the crime and small-town attorney Ned Johnston is drawn into the case. As Johnston investigtates, he begins to realize that the murder is part of a much larger and more sinister political conspiracy with origins in events that occurred years before. With tensions rising in the community and time running out, can Johnston uncover the identity of the killer and expose an insidious plot, or will he find himself ensnared in a deadly conspiracy that threatens to consume the town he loves?