Barnaby Moss and Arnie Kotkin have been friends since their boyhood days of schoolyard fights and choirboy impersonations. After graduating from college, they realized they were more than friends, and it was not long before Arnie's upscale condo in the Belle Harbor section of Lawton, New York had a second occupant. In their first month together, the two young men found themselves facing everything from attempted murder to the real thing. Last autumn, roughly 18 months into their relationship, they traveled to Maple Grove Junction, Vermont, where they were not only joined in a same sex union, they were also on the guest list for a murder. With another summer behind them, they have been called down to Connecticut by Arnie's natural parents after the brutal slaying of their elderly neighbor, and the reluctant sleuths have one more deadly puzzle to piece together.