An ark in the middle of suburban Oakland was interesting but not strange by California standards. Even one built by peaceful cultists preparing for the coming flood. Sometime private eye Jake Samson is hired to find Noah, their leader, who has disappeared with a lovely devotee and a quarter million in cash. The cult suspects foul play. The police aren’t convinced. As Jake and his sidekick, Rosie, trail the wealthy visionary from a health-food factory in Sonoma to a casino in Tahoe, thugs, drugs and the murdered body of Noah’s attractive assistant add up to a lot less than a biblical tale. And Jake's got a gut feeling the floodgates are just the beginning to open.

Unlicensed private eye Jake Samson is an ex-Chicago cop living a laid-back life in the San Francisco Bay Area with his friend and tenant, carpenter Rosie Vicente, to lend him a hand. He gets an offer of a $10,000 paycheck for finding out who killed the wife of a radical Berkeley professor who’s the prime suspect because he stands to inherit her considerable estate. He swears he didn’t do it. Someone else tossed her off the deck of their upscale hills home, he says. Or she jumped. He wants Jake to find out. Plenty of motives. Jealousy, money, dirty politics. The trail twists through the Bay Area’s wide-ranging cultural maze, from Berkeley politics to Oakland ashrams, while Jake and Rosie evade both the police and the killer to find the all-too-human answer.

In the year 2066, Rica Marin – mercenary, spy, torch singer – travels the crumbling roads of a half-civilized America, taking any assignment that pays well… until her latest job at a casino in Tahoe shows her the people she’s spying on may represent the least of several possible evils…