Fourteen months after moving to Montana, fly fisherman, painter and sometime private detective Sean Stranahan is still sleeping in his office-cum-art studio, cobbling together a livelihood as a fishing guide while hawking his riverscape watercolors. No longer a newcomer, he now knows the rivers and has a new love interest in Martinique, a cat lover who earns tuition money for veterinary school by selling coffee as a bikini barista.

But a life of romance and the perfectly painted horizon are not to be. A search dog has discovered the graves of two men on Sphinx Mountain. Sheriff Martha Ettinger suspects murder, but with a bear having scavenged the bodies and the only evidence a hole in a skull that might or might not have been caused by a bullet, she once more turns to Stranahan for help. He already has a case, having been hired by a group of eccentric fly fishermen called The Madison River Liars and Fly Tiers Club to find a valuable fly that they suspect stolen.

Could the disappearance of a vintage Gray Ghost from a riverside cabin in the Madison Valley be connected to the gray ghosts who haunt Sphinx Mountain?

Stranahan will cross paths, and arms, with some of the most powerful people in the valley to find out while enlisting the help of his friend and fellow guide, the irascible Rainbow Sam.