After a narrow escape from his burning house, psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware is ready for a relaxing getaway. And revered scientist Dr. Woodrow Wilson Moreland has just the ticket for Alex and his girlfriend, Robin Castagna: an all-expenses-paid vacation to a Pacific island retreat. It won’t all be fun in the sun, however. But helping Dr. Moreland prepare his fascinating case files for publication is business Alex is happy to mix with pleasure. Unfortunately, pleasure is in short supply on the remote island of Aruk, with its dark history hanging heavy in the tropical air. Though reports of a bloody native uprising and mutants haunting the jungle may be rumors, the brutal, unsolved murder of a young woman is very real. So is the bad vibe Alex and Robin get from a battling pair of married scientists, a scandal-hunting writer, a duo of menacing beach bums, and a politician with a hidden agenda. Not to mention their enigmatic host, a man being eaten alive by secrets. As another savage murder stuns the island, a dangerous storm closes in . . . and so does the conspiracy consuming Aruk like a strangling vine. With no one to trust but each other, Alex and Robin must track down the hellish truth beneath a lost paradise—before the blue Pacific waters run red with more spilled blood.