Paul's life as a thirty year old beach bum was built around surfer friends, parties, the sound of the ocean, and a solitary existence in the last outermost house on Cape Cod. When he found his old girlfriend Penny murdered, he became of interest to the police, and to someone else who thought Penny might have given him something valuable. All he could do was gather a motley crew of surfers around him, and seek help from Arthur Dean Kaminski, an emotionally damaged Vietnam vet who knew how to survive in the toughest of circumstances. And the circumstances were about to get very tough.