Once a hotshot investigative reporter, Jack Tagger now
bangs out obituaries for a South Florida daily, "plotting
to resurrect my newspaper career by yoking my byline to
some famous stiff." Jimmy Stoma, the infamous front man of
Jimmy and the Slut Puppies, dead in a fishy-smelling
scuba "accident," might be the stiff of Jack's dreams — if
only he can figure out what happened.
Standing in the way are (among others) his ambitious young
editor, who hasn't yet fired anyone but plans to "break
her cherry" on Jack; the rock star's pop-singer widow,
who's using the occasion of her husband's death to re-
launch her own career; and the soulless, profit-hungry
owner of the newspaper, whom Jack once publicly humiliated
at a stockholders' meeting.
With clues from the dead rock singer's music, Jack
ultimately unravels Jimmy Stoma's strange fate — in a
hilariously hard-won triumph for muckraking journalism,
and for the death-obsessed obituary writer himself.