When city councilwoman Margaret Ruskin is found dead and mauled in the alligator pit of ArkPark, a newly opened religious theme park in Bayport, Texas, Police Chief Mark Shigata decides to look into past and pending city legislation to see if there's anything therethat might have provoked her murder. It doesn't takelong, however, for other lines of inquiry to open. Ruskin had opposed the opening of the park, but its developer, the Reverend Clifford Hobby, believes that the murder was the action of someone who wanted to discredit not only ArkPark but Hobby's proposed television ministry as well.