Hank Denton, former private investigator and now ex-pat charter boat captain in Mazatlan, Mexico, returns to Los Angeles at the behest of his ex-wife. Their teen-aged daughter is going off track, and both ex-wife and daughter need his help. Hearing of his plans to head to LA, some local Mexican friends ask the former P.I. to look into the murders of two young relatives of theirs a couple of years earlier. Once in LA, Denton tends to his family and discharges his promise to the Andrade family. Yet something doesn't sit right with him. The alleged murderer's "confession" and subsequent suicide seem a little too convenient, and the more Denton digs, the more the mystery deepens. Eventually, the pursuit of justice leads to Hollywood itself, culminating in the resolution of a story thirty years in the making, involving, of all people, Hank Denton himself.Denton, an underachiever pressed by circumstances to exceed himself, manages to juggle some very live ammo in his quest to both redeem himself as a father, and redeem the ruined reputations of those whom fate dealt a dirty hand.