Justin Fowles, confused patriot, geriatric lover, late-blooming romantic, is aging restlessly in Prospect, on the south coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia. Justin rages at his banishment from the RCMP and is sure the Force still spies on him; he suspects the nearby Combat College is an outpost of American expansionism; he fears for his relationship with Annabelle MacKinley, the much younger publisher of the local newspaper.

Whether anti-Quebecois or anti-American or simply a Canadian nationalist is open to question, but Justin''s world is turned upside down when he finds the nude murdered body of a beautiful young woman floating in Prospect Inlet. The body disappears, and in his search for it he loses Annabel and comes face to face with his troubled past. In his perplexity the search for a murder victim becomes a quest for some idealised vision of youth and fulfilment, which ends in a climax as shocking as it is unexpected.