K.C. Constantine's Mario Balzic is one of those police chiefs so close to his people that nothing moves or even sits still in his town without his knowing how and why. His town is Rocksburg, a small coal mining town in western Pennsylvania where most of the coal has run out. Tomatoes curiously ripening out of season are the key. It begins at Muscotti's Bar, Balzic's refuge, when Jimmy Romanelli sells several baskets of tomatoes to Vinnie, Muscotti's barkeep. It ends some weeks later after three deaths and a drained, disgusted Balzic, unable to take any satisfaction in his solution of Romanelli's murder, the proximate cause for Jimmy's twisted passion for growing tomatoes.

Now a special investigator for the state, Mario Balzic probes a seventeen-year-old murder case that takes him on a complex trail leading from a drug deal gone wrong and two bodies in a cabin to a corrupt small-town police chief paralyzed by a stroke.

Police Chief Mario Balzic has got one hot Italian on his heels. Albert Castelucci wants to straighten some things out about his son's murder. It seems that the investigator Balzic appointed to Castelucci's case made such a mess no jury could convict the killer. Pushing Balzic into losing his temper may just provide the answers Castelucci needs.

There's a double robbery in two identical apartments, rented but hardly ever used by a Pittsburg drug dealer who's clean with the law. A young woman is found shot dead on the street. She can't be identified, but her murder has all the appearances of a professional hit. The mayor is near hysteria, and he smears the case all over Balzic, who not only has to solve the murder but teach his nosy new boss the not-so-plain facts of police work.