Newly minted 25-year-old lawyer Bob Abramson joins the DA's office in San Diego and soon finds himself leading an investigation into the politically charged murder of the mayor's husband, a powerful, wealthy developer with far too many secrets for his wife's political ambitions.

Bob's first encounter with murder occurred four years previously, when his roommate, the scion of an old Boston family, was murdered and the case was investigated by the victim's Harvard professor, Marcus George. As the investigation developed, Bob and Marcus, naturally, fell in love.

Now, Bob has completed law school and landed a job as an Assistant District Attorney in San Diego, and Marcus has accepted a new position at UC San Diego. As they settle in to their new home, they're thrust into the investigation and its political ramification, and they find that a gay subculture roils much of southern California's placidly straight surface.