Chaz Perrone might be the only marine scientist in the world who doesn't know which way the Gulf Stream runs. But he's just found a way to make a fortune out of the Florida Everglades, and he's damned if anyone's going to stop him. So when he suspects that his wife, Joey, is going to get in his way, he takes her on an expensive anniversary cruise and pushes her overboard into the night-dark Atlantic.
Unfortunately for Chaz, Joey survives the fall. Clinging to a bale of Jamaican pot, she manages to stay alive, and is plucked from the ocean by former cop, current loner, Mick Stranahan. But instead of rushing to the police and reporting her husband's crime, Joey decides to stay dead and (with Mick's help) screw with Chas until he screws himself.
As Joey haunts and taunts her homicidal husband; as Chaz's cold blooded cohorts in crime grow uneasy with his increasingly erratic behaviour; as Mick Stranahan discovers that six failed marriages have not killed his ability to fall in love all over again, Carl Hiaasen takes us on a hilarious, romantic, page-turning journey through the warped politics of southern Florida, and through the madness and mayhem created by the human heart.