Admiring the silken calfskin sheaths, Chaz felt a knot of remorse in his gut. It passed momentarily, like… — Carl Hiaasen

The dog proved to be as dumb and stubborn as a mud fence, so Stranahan had named him Strom. (Chapter 2)

At the stroke of eleven on a cool April night, a woman named Joey Perrone went overboard from a luxury deck of the cruise liner M.V. Sun Duchess. Plunging toward the dark Atlantic, Joey was too dumbfounded to panic. I married an asshole, she thought, knifing headfirst into the waves. (Chapter 1)

At heart Chaz Perrone was irrefutably a cheat and a maggot, but he had always shunned violence as dutifully as a Quaker elder. Nobody who knew him, including his few friends, would have imagined him capable of homicide. Chaz himself was somewhat amazed that he'd gone through with it. (Chapter 2)