Wildfires are raging all over the LA basin and the end of times seem to be near. Or so Michael Devlin finds himself thinking the day that Lila Evergreen walks into his office. But one look at her and the whole world can spin off its axis for all he cares. So much beauty.
Rescue seems imminent. In learning of Lila’s runaway daughter, Holly, Michael naturally takes the bit and sets off on a quest to find her, a search that promptly uncovers a dark secret in Lila’s past while hurtling Michael down the rabbit hole of white supremacist conspiracy. Donald Ray Potter, the messiah of a local QAnon chapter, is holding Holly hostage and readying a battleplan to take down the deep state.
Michael quickly zeros in on Potter’s location, only to have him disappear in a shootout with the local police, with Holly nowhere to be found and a young woman’s dead body uncovered in the woods behind Potter’s old house. Another wild ride is thus set in motion through the toni haunts and seamy underbelly of Southern California, with many of the familiar faces from South On Pacific Coast Highway making an encore, including Jim Harrison, Michael’s laconic southern attorney, Detective Whalen, Michael’s grudging ally, Kenny, his wry background researcher, and Dirk Vanderhof, whose money has bought him an early release from prison but not an end to Michael’s relentless efforts to put Dirk back behind bars. A host of new characters also take center stage, like Michael’s comically paranoid jeweler friend, Sal, a Mexican biker named El Chango, who wants Potter’s head, FBI Agent Alessandra Barretta, Michael’s serendipitous love interest, and old man Huntington, Michael’s world-weary billionaire client and symbol of a dying world order.
Above all, Caitlin finally returns to Michael’s life, to both delight and frustrate him with her clinical depression. Throughout the story, as a slew of colorful characters and nefarious deeds crisscross his trail, Michael remains obsessed with learning the identity of the poor young woman Potter has murdered. Fearing it is old man Huntington’s missing daughter, Charlotte, Michael is in a race against time, trying to bring Holly back home safely and prove against every shred of evidence to the contrary that Charlotte is still alive.
