A popular fishing captain is murdered on his own trawler and everyone in Haversport, Massachusetts, knows the culprit is a young deckhand named Ben Broome, including Detective Lillian Grimes. But Ben has discovered the perfect hiding place: as a reporter writing for the tiny Coastal Packet, a newspaper in South Carolina.

When a half-eaten body washes in it becomes the biggest story in the paper's history and brings cunning, charismatic Ben unexpected success. But it also leads Grimes closer to the truth. She soon teams up with hungry rival reporter Florence Park to hunt Ben down before he can charm—or kill—his way to freedom.

Shown from three perspectives, killer, detective, and reporter, Muddy the Water brings readers inside the newsroom of a struggling small newspaper on the bucolic South Carolina coast and speaks to the concept of identity—and whether anyone ever shows their true self.