A dead woman who tangled with the KKK. A letter that hints at foul play. A fabled nightclub that holds secrets as tightly as a gator's grip. For some, Orlando in the years after World War II is a cozy paradise-but they're as wrong as a green flamingo.

Hurricane season, 1948. Successful artist Emily Washington leaves behind her comfortable, cultured Manhattan life for what she hopes will be a quick trip to Orlando to settle her late aunt's affairs. After all, she has a marriage proposal back home, and she's not keen on the withering heat, giant bugs, and unrepentant racism she abhors.

Instead, what Emily discovers in her aunt's will and from her trusted grove manager, Milton Armistead, only raises more questions. Hounded by suspicions her aunt was murdered, Emily and Milton defy the rules of Jim Crow South and team up to uncover the truth about her aunt's life- and seek justice for her death.

As they confront a white-supremacist sheriff, a jazz-playing police detective, and the supposed "gentleman gangster" who presides over the glamorous Flamingo nightclub, Emily and Milton are drawn into danger-and closer to a killer who seems to be relentlessly stalking Emily herself.