In a city of rule breakers, she's the law.  But in a hunt for a killer, she's breaking all the rules....

In Berkeley, people don't just disagree, they make careers out of it. And in a city where anything goes, where burned-out sixties hippies haunt the shadows along Telegraph Avenue, no one can outrun the past. Now police detective Jill Smith is plunged into a case that's pure Berkeley: a tangled tale of sins and retribution that has led to one man's disappearance, and another man's murder.

The missing man is Jill's friend, countercultural private eye Herman Ott, who always wears yellow and always offends. The murder victim was a flamboyant mediator of civic disputes, found shot to death in Ott's office. Now, fearing for Ott's safety, and defying the wishes of her own male-dominated department, Jill is about to wade into the wild, woolly world of Berkeley's most contentious citizens. For somewhere among the passionate, the poseurs, and the pranksters lurks a killer--and one very good reason why Herman Ott is running for his life....