"It was the feast of St. Francis, and the lawn in front of Faith Abbey's new church was filled with townspeople and abbey members bringing their creatures, great and small, to the Blessing of the Animals. Brother Bartholomew was joyfully immersed in this happy chaos, when his pager vibrated. Returning the call, he learned from Dan Burke, Eastport's Chief of Police, that they'd just had their second 'hundred-year weather event' in two years. The body of a woman had washed ashore, and there was evidence that she had been tortured before drowning. The Chief was about to go down to the morgue, and he wanted Bartholomew to accompany him.

Though their paths had diverged greatly, the monk and the chief of police were native Cape Codders who had been boyhood friends. The previous year, Bartholomew, initially a prime suspect in the investigation of the little harbor village's first murder in half a century, wound up providing pivotal assistance in solving the crime.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, Chief Burke has little more to deal with than drivers who are sure they were doing only 30, or who insist they've had only two beers. But a woman has drowned under potentially horrendous circumstances, and the ten million dollars in diamonds she had with her has vanished. The Chief badly needs the help of the monk whose friary overlooks the harbor, and whose gift of intuition is uncanny."

How this unlikely pair copes with an increasingly challenging and complex case makes for a swiftly paced, spellbinding read. It builds to a breathtaking climax in a delightful seaside town peopled with characters who will seem like old friends.