It's a sparkling August day on Washington Island and the resonant notes
of early classical music float on the breeze toward the sailboats and
ferries that ply the waters of Death's Door strait. After a forty-year
absence, the Viola da Gamba Music Festival has returned to the
picturesque isle on the tip of Wisconsin's Door County peninsula.
Sheriff Dave Cubiak enjoys a rare day off as tourists and a documentary
film crew hover around the musicians.
The jubilant mood sours when an unidentified passenger is found dead on
a ferry. Longtime residents recall with dismay the disastrous festival
decades earlier, when another woman died and a valuable
sixteenth-century instrument-the fabled yellow viol-vanished, never to
be found.
Cubiak follows a trail of murder, kidnapping, and false identity that
leads back to the calamitous night of the twin tragedies. With the lives
of those he holds most dear in peril, the sheriff pursues a ruthless
killer into the stormy northern reaches of Lake Michigan.