The story features five women who set out to avenge the death of a friend at the hands of three of the most powerful men in California. They know only that the body of Ginger Pass was found on a path outside an exclusive men’s club during the club’s summer retreat, and they alone know that Ginger worked secretly as a high-priced call girl. Drawing on their own intelligence, professional connections and moral outrage, the five--a financially savvy widow, the owner of a chain of sports clubs, a dermatologist, an estate lawyer and a deputy tax assessor--piece together what happened and plot a necessarily anonymous and covert revenge against each man. And in the course of carrying out this campaign, each woman finds the conviction to change her own life.

    Polly, Kat, Dinah, Charlotte and Justine are not practiced sleuths but competent, successful women in their thirties and forties--thoughtful, witty and ironic. They’re also aware that what they’re doing is morally valid but dangerous...and thus doubly satisfying.

    For all the action and adventure, revenge is a fairly dark concept and the themes of the story are serious: the way success breeds success, the righting of wrongs, the power of friendship, and the thin line between life and death, public and private life, achievement and discontent.