Working with seasoned detective Milton Gurkey—a. k. a. Pickles—didn’t exactly start off as a solid partnership.

Disgruntled at being stuck with a rookie, Pickles felt it was his duty to give Beaumont a hard time. But, when Pickles is suspected of murder, there’s only one person who can help him.

One day, a stop at the Doghouse restaurant quickly turns deadly. Not feeling well, Pickles steps out into the parking lot for a breath of fresh air and stumbles into a crime in progress In the same instant, he is felled by a sudden heart attack. Eventually, he’s found unconscious, with a dead woman on the ground nearby, and the murder weapon in his hand.

With Pickles under an Internal Affairs investigation, it's up to the new kid on the block, his partner, and friends on the force to uncover the truth.

An end of the year Christmas party at the Space Needle seems like just the thing to cap off the holidays until a carload of fleeing bank robbers crash into a vehicle containing not only the Special Homicide Investigation Team’s big boss, Washington State Attorney General, Ross Connors, but also Beau’s and Mel’s immediate supervisor, Harry I. Ball. With Ross dead and Harry hospitalized as double amputee, the stage is set for the dissolution of SHIT and for big changes in the lives of everyone involved.

JAJ