Matthew Hope has been shot - taking two bullets outside a bar in Calusa's seediest neighborhood. With Matthew in a postsurgery semicoma, the men and women who know him best go to the places he went, talk to the people he talked to, and desperately try to find out who wanted Matthew Hope dead.

The sexy, tough investigator called Toots Kiley, the world-weary cop named Morris Bloom, and Warren Chambers, a strong black man who gets reminded every day that Florida is still the Deep South, start to get the picture: Matthew Hope had walked into a weird and wild world.

Hope had been hired to close a real estate deal for a small, successful circus. He found himself surrounded by trapeze artists, wild animal trainers, seductive dancers, and freaks who shared a society of amazing feats, kinky sex, and dark secrets. Before Hope could do his job he had to find out how a curvacious three-foot-tall woman met a violent death, and what happened to her extensive estate.

Instead of an answer, Hope got a riddle. Now in a Calusa hospital, he fights for his life. His friends scramble for clues. But the riddle - and a killer - are still out there: There was a little girl who had a little girl who had a little girl...