<p>What would it be like to return to your hometown after twenty-five years in prison for a crime you have maintained you did not commit? And why would you?</p><p>Walter Desmond is back in Trafalgar British Columbia having been officially exonerated when new evidence showed corruption at worst incompetence at best by the Trafalgar City Police conducting the investigation. His pitbull attorney is seeking five million in damages from the provincial government. But Walt has not returned to Trafalgar to pursue money or revenge. He just wants to know the <i>why </i>of it.</p><p>The family of the murdered girl Sophia D’Angelo is bitterly determined to see Walt returned to prison?or dead. But for Trafalgar’s police including Sergeant John Winters and Constable Molly Smith the reality is that if Walter didn’t kill Sophia someone else did. So case reopened it lands on Winters’ desk. The records are moldering. One investigating officer is dead the other is retired?and not talking.</p><p>The police are instructed to treat Walt as if he’d never been arrested or convicted. Someone else apparently killed Sophia someone still walking free. But too many minds remain closed. It’s good luck for Walt that a group of women in town for the dragon boat race are staying in the B&B where he’s booked women with no local prejudices. But then a townswoman then a boat woman are attacked by a rapist the media gets active and tempers dangerously flare.</p>