Set in Lewes on the Delaware Bay 1955, Myers meets James Ellroy's characterization of Noir as the the wrong man and the wrong woman in perfect misalliance. It's the nightmare of flawed souls with big dreams and the precise how and why of the all-time sure thing that goes bad... it canonizes the inherent human urge toward self-destruction. Former Marine and small-town police chief, Karl Myers is one of four principal characters, each of whom hurtle headlong toward personal demolition; the others are Jerry and Vivian Peterman and their 12-year-old son, Greg. Myers' marriage had dissolved before The War, and the life that has followed has been a life lived in the strange world of uniforms where a man, surrounded by hundreds of other souls, can find himself sucked into an unyielding vortex of loneliness, which threatens to drown his soul. Jerry's abuse of Greg and Vivian, and Vivian's rationalizations for accepting it, have created a dysfunctional family that is on the brink of collapse when Greg's best friend, Moses, is brutally murdered. Greg, along with the reader, knows what has happened, and the boy is fearful of his father's certain retribution, but the boy successfully hides the truth from his family and from Myers until the chief resolves the mystery almost too late to save the victim's sister, who is the only witness to the murder in addition to Greg (and the reader). Complicating Myers' challenges is the attitude of too many White residents toward their Black neighbors--like Moses' mother--in a county where schools, many public places, and accommodations are still segregated in 1955. The Crucible of World War II produced a generation of heroes who understood manhood as a stoic duty that demanded complete intolerance of weakness. Many returned from battle eager to raise sons who would be prepared to bear the responsibilities of a hard world. Drill instructors had forged warrior personas by replacing personal will with unquestioned