Until her newspaper, The Baltimore Star, crashed, Tess Monaghan was a first-rate reporter who knew her home town intimately - from historic Fort McHenry to the crumbling projects of Cherry Hill. Now gainfully unemployed at 29 she's willing to do any freelance job to pay the rent - including a bit of unorthodox snooping for her rowing buddy Darryl 'Rock' Paxton. In a city where someone is murdered almost every day, attorney Michael Abramowitz's death should be just another statistic. But the lawyer's notoriety, and his trysts with Rock's fiancée, make the case front page news - and make Rock the chief suspect ...