Over the years, retired bureaucrat Chris Landrum has stumbled across several murders on his adopted island of Folly Beach, South Carolina, but nothing prepared him for a body falling into his arms at his back door in the middle of the night. To intensify and compound the mystery even more, Chris learns the dead man owned Chris's cottage before selling it to him more than thirteen years ago. Why had the man Chris had never met appeared at his door carrying a pry bar and a key with Chris's address on the keyring? And even more frightening, who killed him before he could make his intentions known?

With the police at a loss, it was up to Chris, his best friend Charles Fowler, and Chris's neighbor, a retired police detective who had accused Chris on more than one occasion as being a murderer, to catch the killer before Chris becomes his latest victim.