It is now nine weeks since Dr. Dowan Purcell vanished without trace.

The 69-year-old doctor said goodnight to colleagues at the Pacific Meadows nursing home, climbed into his car and drove away - never to be seen again. His embittered first wife Fiona is convinced he is still alive. His second wife, Crystal, a former stripper forty years his junior, is just as sure he is dead.

Enter private investigator Kinsey Millhone, hired by Fiona to find out just what happened to the man the two women loved. And also enter Tommy Hevener, a flame-haired, twenty-something who has set his romantic sights on Kinsey. It doesn't take long before we find out that Tommy is a man with a very interesting past. The word 'peril?' It applies most of all to Kinsey herself!