Traven Collins is a sort of detective. He's not really a detective, more what you might call a burnt-out case who was a writer and now who'll take most any kind of writing job to pay the rent. If it's interesting.
He lives in a nice seaside suburb of Melbourne with down-and-outers, stand over merchants and ice addicts at one end and pimps, thieves, hookers and transexual rent boys at the other. Traven takes a job from an old friend to promote the visit of the last American beat poet, Duke Weston, who claims to have been a friend of Kerouac and Burroughs etc. Things are going averagely until the first death—which seems to be a hit and run but proves to be a murder. And then the next one...that's murder too. Both of the victims were poets.
With his trusty sidekick, the brilliant border collie Maynard G Crabs, Traven sets out to make sure he doesn't become embroiled in these murders most foul and most horrid. And he has to protect Lexi, the young lady who couldn't possibly be his daughter—could she?
