When Boston homicide detective James Doyle's partner is killed in an ambush, her dying words provide him with a clue that sends him to the remote island of Nantucket. There in the grey off-season when streets are empty, his hunt for the killer leads him to the heart of island where not even he can hide from the truth.

Hired to enact revenge on a man who savagely beat a beautiful Russian débutant, Jack Verlaine is pressed between his newly acquired job and a persistent man named, Brill, who offers him a chance to advance higher in his seedy career. But when an estranged lover reappears in Verlaine's regimented existence, he soon realizes the new elements in his life may be just a plot to uncover his true identity.