It is late June in Michigan's gold coast vacation area. The summer residents are settling in for the season and the tourists are beginning to flood the highways, beaches, and resorts. But the idyllic vision of a summer by the lake is suddenly shattered by a gangland-style slaying of one of the old money cottagers. This murder is quickly followed by the deaths of three more summer residents, each taking place under suspicious circumstances.

At times hindered by local politics and the proverbial tension between the 'summer people' and the 'natives', Sheriff Ray Elkins searches for the possible links between the four victims. As he probes into their tangled lives and dark histories, he finds both the motive and the possible murderer.