How well do you know your friends – really, truly, know them?

That’s the question Police Chief Sean Colbeth finds himself asking when a local university professor living in the seaside village of Windeport is found dead in the bed of his late-model powder blue pickup truck, surrounded by five-gallon jugs of water. While it’s clear he’s been shot, there’s no bullet, no gun and no clear reason why the geriatric head of the Extension Service would be on anyone’s hit list.

Reasoning he knows his town better than anyone, Sean ignores his gut instinct to let the State take over the investigation, but finds himself asking unexpectedly hard questions of the people he thought he knew – friends, and even family members that become strangers upon further examination.

As he struggles to understand the startling motive he uncovers, Sean discovers both lies and deceit just below the whitewashed exteriors of the village he’s lived in his entire life. Digging deeper unearths secrets even the dead professor had hoped to keep buried; as he watches his own personal life unravel with each and every revealed clue, Sean discovers memories are long and fury can be as icy cold as the long Northeastern winters.

This isn’t what success is supposed to look like.

Sean Colbeth should know; as one of the most accomplished investigators in the State of Maine, the Police Chief of Windeport is used to the quiet accolades that come with a job well done. But solving the first major crime the village has seen in decades brought with it unexpected fallout: not only did he fracture relationships with just about everyone he held dear, the abrupt departure of his best friend is an open wound that refuses to heal.

And when Vasily Korsokovach’s absence directly contributes to the death of an elderly resident, Sean realizes his career is on the line once the Village Council puts him on administrative leave pending a full review of his department. More than aware it would be prudent to lay low – and not having anything else to do for a bit, anyway – Sean decides a change of scene is in order and heads to California to consult on a case in what he assumes will be two weeks of relatively easy work. A welcome chance to rest, recharge and reflect on his future as a cop.

Except it’s anything but.

Unexpectedly reunited under less than ideal circumstances with his old partner, the duo quickly discover passions can be as unpredictable as the Santa Ana winds. As the duo delve further into the shocking murder of a star high school athlete, Sean realizes murder is still murder – no matter the coast.

It’s the season of miracles.

At least, that’s what Windeport Police Chief Sean Colbeth is hoping for when he invites his estranged best friend to Windeport for the Christmas holiday. Miracle number one was Vasily Korsokovach picking up the phone months after abruptly exiting Sean’s life a second time; miracle number two was having him agree to leave the warm Southern California coast he nows calls home to spend ten days in the cold. If he’s truly lucky, miracle number three will see Sean finally mending a relationship he’d once held dear - without accidentally opening any old wounds.

Of course, the universe had other ideas.

What begins as a cozy, snowed-in Christmas holiday with friends and family becomes anything but when a tourist is found dead at the bottom of the roughest ski trail the county has to offer. And when that body unexpectedly turns out to be a college acquaintance from Dr. Suzanne Kellerman’s past, personal secrets long thought buried are rather abruptly yanked out into the open, upending any and all holiday plans. Thrust into an investigation neither wanted, Sean and Vasily are forced to work out their differences under less than ideal circumstances as they race to make sense of the senseless. For much like the Christmas Day Nor’easter, the duo are the only thing standing between a vengeful killer and their escape from justice.

A millionaire’s missing computer, their dead housekeeper and a family secret hidden in plain sight: these are the elements of a most unusual case quite literally handed to Detective Vasily Korsokovach moments after arriving at John Wayne International in Southern California. Put into the awkward position of cleaning up a colleague’s sloppy investigation, Vasily immediately finds himself on the defensive after he begins asking uncomfortable questions in pursuit of the truth. And when he pulls a thread that inadvertently connects to a decades-old suspicious death that has a personal connection to the department, he encounters uncompromising and outdated attitudes in the one place he least expects to find them.

While he’d hoped for a fresh start, this wasn’t exactly what he had in mind.

Alone and truly on his own for the first time in years, Vasily buries himself in his initial case as lead detective and leans heavily on a new friend – one who he hopes could become something more, replacing the ache in his soul that has dogged him since leaving everything he loved behind in Windeport. Broken hearts have a way of blinding one to everything else that is important, though, and Vasily is no exception to that rule...

Spring: the season of renewal.

For Vasily Korsokovach, it feels especially true: newly reinstated to his original position after a string of successful case closures, his life in Southern California appears to finally be back on track. That’s despite having been the key witness in an Internal Affairs investigation that takes down his former colleague (and one-time lover) — a role that does nothing to endear him to the rank-and-file of the Rancho Linda Police Department — and the nagging concern that said colleague seems to feel there are still scores to be settled.

The promise of the season is shattered when a fatal house fire claims the lives of a couple well regarded for their involvement in Rancho Linda. From charitable fundraisers to stints at the soup kitchen, it’s clear to Vasily they were driven to give back to their community; their deaths are a huge blow to the small city. Sifting through the ashes of what he assumed had been lives well lived, Vasily instead discovers the couple’s final project to turn around the booster group for their daughter’s softball team had inadvertently placed them into deadly peril.

In a small city brimming with hidden grievances, danger is where you least expect it to be; despite all of his years of experience, it’s a lesson Detective Korsokovach is forced to learn the hard way.

Where one journey ends, another begins.

As the summer tourist season draws to a close in Windeport, Maine, Vasily Korsokovach is at a personal crossroads: unable to return to the career he’d barely begun in California, he unexpectedly finds himself resisting his best friend’s efforts to have him resume his old position in Windeport. Unsure if he even wants to be an investigator any longer, Vasily manages to nonetheless land himself in the middle of a case when he inadvertently discovers the body of a local developer at the bottom of a ditch not far from the local university.

Sensing a chance to help his friend stretch his investigative muscles, Chief Sean Colbeth makes Vasily an offer he can’t refuse, fully anticipating a typically speedy resolution from his former number two. Except Vasily is anything but recovered from his near-fatal encounter with a vindictive ex-partner; dogged by nightmares that he can’t shake, working the murder lays bare his struggles to put his life back together, leading Vasily to wonder if he’s as much of an asset to Sean as he once was.

Distracted by a new arrival in Windeport and an unforeseen emergency, Vasily soon realizes that his unwillingness to admit he needs help has consequences – not just to the case, but to those he cares the most about.

They say the second time is the charm.

Then again, maybe they don’t, but after a rocky summer in Maine, Vasily Korsokovach certainly hopes it’s true as he returns to more comfortable territory to resume the life he didn’t know he’d missed in his native Southern California. With a second chance at his law enforcement career and the welcome but unexpected support of a new significant other, Vas thinks he’s finally found the fresh start that faltered so badly months earlier.

Balancing personal healing with his professional duties grows rather complicated after a freak rainstorm delivers the body of the head gymnastics coach from Cal State Irvine into a Rancho Linda reservoir. Wrapped in a tumbling mat bearing the school’s logo is about the only lead Vasily has, but his habit of following any thread – no matter how thin – reveal secrets well buried from a decade earlier, and a carefully choreographed conspiracy to keep them buried, no matter the cost.

Secrets that only another fellow Olympian might understand.

Secrets that reveal some are loathe to let bygones be bygones.

Weeks after his welcome reconciliation with his best friend, Windeport Police Chief Sean Colbeth is firmly mired in the doldrums of a brutal Coastal Maine winter that just won’t quit. With snowbanks outside his office window high enough to block out what little sun they are getting — not to mention the minutiae of administering his department similarly piling up — Sean is more than looking forward to breaking the seemingly endless monotony of the season. His long-planned vacation to attend a comic book convention in Anaheim with his main squeeze is literally just what the doctor ordered, enough of a lifeline to pull him through to their departure from the Portland International Jetport.

At least, that’s until an unexpected call from Vasily Korsokovach has Sean setting aside his budget spreadsheets, for the Deputy Chief at the Rancho Linda Police Department has a problem: after spending the weekend skiing in Windeport, Don Davies failed to appear for a planned family visit in California. As the family of the nationally syndicated radio program host is understandably worried — and hoping it’s nothing more than a case of crossed communications between father and daughter — Vasily asks his old friend to do a quick wellness check to give the family some peace of mind.

Intent on providing that solace, Sean instead uncovers a deadly mystery with roots in Southern California — one based on a secret Davies managed to keep hidden from everyone, despite a multiple-decade career in an industry where skeletons are rarely kept in the closet. Sean pulls what threads he can in Maine, but ultimately finds himself packing his bags for the West Coast a few weeks earlier than expected. For the land of palm trees and wide sandy beaches seems to hold the key to understanding why someone felt compelled to cancel the popular radio personality.

Permanently.

Distracted by guilt over the serious injuries his best friend sustained while assisting with a case, Vasily Korsokovach doesn’t think much of the envelope that appears in his mailbox at the Rancho Linda Police Department. Containing a bunch of retro Polaroid snapshots showing a series of ordinary objects in everyday situations, the Deputy Chief finds himself at a loss as to why anyone would send him such random photos; whatever hidden message the sender was hoping to pass along is a mystery that Vasily is unwilling to delve into. At least, not until Sean Colbeth is back on his feet — and back on a plane to Windeport, Maine.

Stretched thin and emotionally exhausted, it takes the discovery of a body behind the last remaining bowling alley in the city for Vasily to realize just what sort of collection he’s been given. For while it would be a strange coincidence the corpse just happens to be wearing a pair of shoes featured prominently in one of the Polaroid shots, Vas begins to suspect something far more sinister — especially after additional victims appear within days, each paired with item from a photo. As the clues begin to come into focus, the chilling reason Vasily has been singled out for attention raises the stakes and plunges those he cares the most about into extreme peril.

Drawn into a deadly game of cat and mouse with a cunning killer who appears to have a particularly unusual method for selecting victims, Vas struggles to understand the peculiar roadmap contained within the fading pictures before the next victim arrives in the morgue.