Lew Fonesca is a sad sack of a man, a guy who lost his wife in a tragic hit-and-run accident in Chicago four years ago and then literally drove away from his life. Now settled in Sarasota, he does small-time criminal investigations and marinates in his well-nurtured gloom. But to his friends and the people he's helped, Lew is a caring man who does all he can to see that justice is done ... even if it means bending the letter, if not the spirit, of the law." "A local curmudgeon who has been campaigning to end state-sponsored school funding is brutally killed. The accused, a recent graduate of a public high school for the gifted, turns to Lew for help. A semiretired and much beloved performer of children's songs is being anonymously threatened with exposure as a sexual predator. He turns to Lew to find out who is behind this false accusation." As Lew works on these baffling cases, he slowly comes to realize that somewhere along the way he has managed to pick up what looks like the beginning of a new life: people who care about him, people whom, he grudgingly admits, he is beginning to care about. But the good life that Lew so richly deserves might disappear when he's forced to come to a hard choice - do the right thing and see his happiness evaporate, or betray a trust and be happy.