While accompanying his grandmother and her new husband to Alaska, J.P. Beaumont finds himself investigating the murder of a middle-aged divorc ee aboard a cruise ship, a crime in which the only witness is an Alzheimer's patient.
When J.P. Beaumont's teenaged daughter runs away, her tracks lead the sober-but-struggling sleuth to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. And, in addition to his very headstrong offspring, Beau find something else backstage: a case of cold-blooded murder.
When software seller Tadeo Kurobashi, an amateur student of Samurai history, is found dead with a Samurai sword in his hand, hara-kiri is suspected, but an error in the ancient ritual leads Detective Sergeant J. P. Beaumont to suspect murder.
Detective J. P. Beaumont uncovers kickbacks and bribes in a Seattle ironworker's union, but his investigation may be curtailed by a long walk off a short I-beam.
