Mason Prophet Long watches from behind the wheel of a taxi as an evening storm thunders down the beach. Alcohol and drug abuse has forged a crack in his personal paradise, a chasm that grows bigger each day. Fueled by the bar scene of Sunset Beach, Mason finds himself weaving a soap opera of relationships that suffer badly from his happy depravity.

When he finds his eight o'clock fare and friend Carmen dead in bed, strangled with blue-black-yellow-purple bruises around her throat, the crack widens. Drowning in alcoholic blackouts, Mason's memory of the night of the murder remains...