A bomb couldn't kill Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel—but his convalescence at the Avalon Clinic in the quaint seaside resort of Sandytown ("Home of the Healthy Holiday") just might. Sneaking out to the local pub provides Fat Andy with a bit of necessary diversion, allowing him a pint or two on the sly, plus an update on the world of trouble outside the clinic—including the very different plans of a pair of powerful landowners for putting Sandytown more prominently on the map.

But when a rather macabre murder calls Chief Inspector Peter Pascoe onto the scene, Fat Andy realizes that Avalon itself is no sanctuary from the lethal secrets of the local elite—or from the death tide that now, suddenly, is rising quite rapidly.