Gerald Dawson was an angry little man, a fundamentalist, a family man, who set out to change the world he feared and hated. He ended up murdered. The police are sure the killer is the owner of a Hollywood porno shop Dawson and his zealous cohorts had trashed. But crack insurance investigator Dave Bradstetter finds too many loose ends. Who was the runaway teenager sen with Dawson at a Sunset Strip disco? What was Dawson's connection with the porno filmmaker? Why are Dawson's widow and son so frightened?

Dave's investigation takes him from an evangelical church to a pornographic film studio, from the sunlit world of sleek cabin-cruisers to the neon nightmare of teenage drugs and prostitution. But the answers wait far away in a windswept midnight mountain wilderness, where Dave Brandstetter's life comes dramatically close to a mad and savage end.