The trauma of finding her father, Congressman Frank Cooper, sitting in one of her mother's favorite chairs with half of his face blown away, and a gun in his lap, has kept Rosemary Cooper from the family vacation home in Pirates Point, New Jersey for twenty-seven years. Now at thirty-eight, overweight, widowed, and not happy with her desk job, NYPD Detective Rosemary Cooper-Coop for short-has returned to Pirates Point to sort out her life. When she literally plops down on a sand dune next to the body of Alberta Wallace, Coop finds herself involved in the investigation of the woman's murder. She soon learns of two other victims, and a possible connection between the three deaths, and her father's suicide. It isn't until her sister, Viv is brutally attacked that Coop realizes the killer is decompensating, and she is his next victim.