Lately, Key West is not quite the laid back place that occasional freelance crime-scene-photographer Alex Rutledge prefers. It's bad enough that the discovery of two dead ex-Navy men one morning?both found swinging on boat lifts twenty miles apart?means grisly work at the indecent hour of 7AM. It's worse that Alex's run-in with a chest-thumping new deputy turns out to have ominous consequences when his wayward younger brother turns up in town...and becomes the prime suspect.

Alex knows Tim has messed up his life, but he just can't believe his brother isn't a killer. As Alex digs deeper, he starts to make connections the cops have missed?but he's baffled when he finds one of the deceased owns a picture of a young girl who turned to Alex for help many years ago. And when a third man is found swinging on the docks, he knows time is running out for his brother. But what he doesn't know is that facing the killer may turn out to be the least of his problems...