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?
Ned Johnston, a middle-aged attorney, has escaped the grind of a high-pressure job by returning to his hometown of Oceanic Park and establishing a small law practice. He spends his spare time hanging out at Java Joe’s Coffee Cafe, surfing the 21st Street beach break, and listening to music at an old jazz club called the Crow’s Nest.
The carefree days of summer in Oceanic Park are shattered, however, when a client and friend of Johnston’s dies under suspicious circumstances. Unsatisfied with the police investigation and suspecting a coverup, Johnston starts his own investigation into the death with the assistance of Sophia Ambrosetti, an investigator and forensic researcher. Their investigation has the effect of stirring up a hornet’s next and uncovers a web of corruption, deception, and murder.