On Saturday evening she’d watched Robert have sex with five women. She’d had sex with two men. And now it was Tuesday morning and she was driving along the highway with her seven-year-old daughter.

Sex with strangers on a Saturday, family outings in the station wagon on Tuesday morning. Winter may be closing in on the coastal community of Waterloo, but the residents have their own ways of keeping warm.

When Janine McQuarrie is shot dead in a country lane while her daughter looks on, her exotic social life is an obvious factor in the investigation. But for Inspector Hal Challis and Sergeant Ellen Destry, there are other complications. Such as Janine’s father-in-law: Superintendent McQuarrie, bureaucrat, golfer and toady. Challis and Destry’s boss.

Everybody has something to hide this winter. And someone in Waterloo is determined to kill again.