"THIS IS BEACH HAVEN, NOT THE BIG CITY; WE HAVE OUR OWN WAY OF DOING THINGS. WE DON'T NEED OUTSIDERS BUTTING IN, TRYING TO CHANGE THINGS." Lewis Porter was an outsider - asked by the local police to examine a murder scene because of his past... work experience . It was experience that he was more than happy to keep right where he left it: in the past. But people's pasts have a funny way of catching up with them. A string of mysterious disappearances of amateur poetesses in the sleepy New Jersey shore town of 1930s Beach Haven bring Porter out of self-imposed retirement and lead him from the beaches to the Pinelands in search of an answer and a killer - a killer who makes it personal. Porter finds more than death: beneath the sand and the trees runs a foul, hidden sewer of sin in which society's highest and lowest swim - all of whom have a stake in keeping their dirty truths from seeing light. And Porter is holding open the manhole cover. It's a case that not everyone wants solved - except Porter. The question is, will he finish the case before it finishes him? "Ever seen a dead man?" I was looking at one.