As the warm weather approaches different waves of people make their way to the seaside’s resorts. Asides from the regular tourists there are the June Bugs, which come early in the year. These are the graduating High School Seniors who come for a week or so to let off steam. Then there are the small groups of conventioneers because large groups cannot be accommodated. Class reunions meet up and many other groups like the beach as a get together. The boardwalks are also a place for shelter for the young who are on the run from home and family and think they will blend in on the beach and will be safe at a family resort. Jobs are plentiful and they should be okay. But will they be?
Sea Haven, New Jersey is just that sort of family resort on a barrier Island off the coast of New Jersey. One day Police Officers John Ceepak and Danny Boyle had just returned from a short trip to a neighboring town where they returned a high school ring to a man who had given it to his high school sweetheart Lisa. She had gone to Sea Haven the summer of '83 and had never come back. She fell into that category of people that nobody really cared enough about to follow up on. Ceepak belonged to one of those clubs that used metal detectors to finds objects left on the beach and had unearthed the ring and had wanted to return it. This is the first summer that Danny is a full time police officer. He has been to the police academy but when he is uncertain in some situations he wishes he had a hat with the initials W.W.C.D. What Would Ceepak Do? This seems to be a good guide most of the time.
Ceepak lives by a code. He does not lie, cheat, or steal or tolerate those who do. If he ever chops down a cherry tree, he'll hand you the axe and arrest himself.
The partners were now on beach patrol securing the area of un upcoming sandcastle building contest which was a new project for Sea Haven and was expected to be a big money draw for the community, when they were called to a local seafaring museum because jars of body parts had been found. Oddly these body parts seemed to have been removed by a scalpel in an expert fashion. More oddly still they are hand dated to the early eighties. The anatomical specimens continue to pop up in the next few days in different spots like the critters in the game Whack a Mole.
As Ceepak and Danny follow this trail you hardly catch your breath before something else is happening and the plot develops at a rapid pace. The clues were laid out like a treasure hunt because the perpetrator believed himself to be very clever. One of the difficulties in this case was that the list of suspects was too long. There were many people that were repeat visitors to the resort area. The classic question was why were the parts surfacing now? More than twenty-five years had passed in some cases. The sad thing is why these bodies have not been searches for prior to this
It is because they fall in the category of what Ceepak refers to as the less dead. One who nobody back home seems to care about because he or she is one of civilized society's so-called loser's or trouble makers. Someone who doesn't toe the line or seems to be cast away with out a line.
This case gets very close to home for Ceepak. Danny also has to dig a little deep and find out what he is made of. They help each other out as partners do. Of course they both need the help of the Jersey shores poet laureate Bruce Springsteen's immortal words on more than one occasion.
I wanna find one face that ain't looking through me,
I wanna find one place, I wanna spit in the face of these badlands.
This is a perfect story of the darkness hidden beneath the happy smile. There are no paradises out there. But most of the people at beach have a good time and the Ceepaks and the Dannys are at work keeping the rest of the people at funland enjoying the rides. So instead of Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town we listen to The Promised Land.
All the same it is a wonderful ride if you hop on. There is nothing better than a trip down the shore. You can smell the salt air, you can almost taste all the food that could only be named at a seaside resort. If you have no time off coming grab a Chris Grabenstein vacation.
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