Shot twice. Plummeted into cardiac arrest. Pulled from the depths of a nasty coma. Attorney Matthew Hope’s had a rough few months. So when a slightly cross-eyed beauty brings him a cushy copyright infringement suit over a similarly cross-eyed teddy bear named Gladly, all signs point to an easy victory. But before Hope can sue, he gets sucked into another case. The charge: homicide. The main suspect: his lovely, cockeyed client, Lainie Commins.

With western Florida’s opulent mansions rising above sunbaked squalor and yacht clubs only a step removed from a seedy, drug-and-sex-filled underbelly, unraveling Lainie’s increasingly shady alibis won’t be easy. But Hope has to figure out if she’s just a plaintiff with an ocular defect or a beauty with deadeye aim.

Grand Master Award–winning author Ed McBain paints a crooked world where justice is elusive and telling the difference between the good and the murderous takes a keen eye.