To its visitors, the resort area Tucker Peak is Vermont personified: small, thinly populated, a fun place to ski all day and party all night. To its beleaguered owners, it is a resort on the ropes, undersized, underdeveloped, and hemorrhaging money. Their plan: expand and spend a fortune on the gamble. But two problems quickly arise when environmentalists rally to protest the development and the slope-side condo owners suffer a rash of seemingly unsolvable burglaries. Enter Joe Gunther and the newly minted Vermont Bureau of Investigation. Summoned by the embattled local sheriff, Joe doesn't take long to find out that the most likely thief has mysteriously vanished - leaving behind his dead girlfriend - or to discover that some of the protesters may have more on their agendas than protecting the environment. Soon Joe finds himself undercover and buried up to his neck in an increasingly violent game. To survive he must sort through a multitude of players in a risky town where swindlers and saboteurs run amok, corruption and deceit lurk at every turn...and the truth is the most dangerous gamble of all.