Sometimes, I dose my eyes and imagine myself at the top of Mt. Tamalpais, the jagged peak that overlooks Marin. The weather is temperate one moment, unruly and fog-driven the next. The wind blows through me as if I don't exist.There are rumors about this mountain. Of spiritualists who transcend the material world while walking the high trails.Of cougars sleeping in the grass. Of coyotes who grab small children and disappear into the rocks.

The gray Pacific lies to the west and San Francisco Bay to the east, and the land in between is multitudinous.Hardscrabble beaches. Green pastures and black forests.Brown hills and canyons filled with yellow light. The roads spiderweb down the hills, over the old Indian graveyards,past the abandoned communes and the Zen retreats. They snake beneath the custom homes that gleam on the promontories, through the old towns, past squares lined with madrone and eucalyptus and oak. All-American towns really, each one bleeding into the next.

Jake Danser has it all: a beautiful wife, a house in the California hills, and a high-profile job as a forensic psychologist. But he's also got a mistress. And when she's found strangled to death with his necktie, the police show up at his door. Now it's up to Jake to prove he didn't do it. But haw can he, when all the evidence says he did?As Jake's life crumbles around him, he races to find proof of his innocence. And with every step, the noose is tightening...