When the body of a lovely young woman is found floating beneath a party pontoon on a popular lake in northern Wisconsin on the same morning that a prominent widow is found bludgeoned in her gracious home, Loon Lake Police Chief Lew Ferris is caught short-handed.

This is not a problem for Doc Osborne whom she deputizes to act as coroner and to assist with the investigation. Fishing aside, there's nothing Osborne likes better than helping Lew — a world-class fly fisherman in her own right — delve into Loon Lake's criminal underworld. They're joined in their efforts to untangle two seemingly unrelated murders by walleye-expert, talented tracker and teller of really bad jokes, Ray Pradt.

A charming resort town on the surface, life in Loon Lake turns murky as bank officials soon discover that both victims' accounts have been looted - along with a dozen others. One grisly development after another further links the two murders even though the victims did not know each other. Wealthy Chicagoans, visiting entrepreneurs and the young denizens of "Party Cove" complicate the scene. Whoever thought life in the Northwoods could be this dangerous?