In the discreet little Key West bar that Jake Stonebender established, Fast Eddie Costigan learned to curse back at parrots as he played the house piano; the Reverend Tom Hauptman learned to tend bar bare-chested, and Long-Drink McGonnigle discovered the margarita. Nobody even noticed them save the universe.

After 10 quiet years, their laid-back existence is disturbed by a malevolent, moronic Mafioso, named Tony Donuts, Jr., intending to resurrect the classic protection racket in Key West. Jake's scientifically precocious 13-year-old daughter is threatened by the truancy officer and then, thanks to very poor accessorizing, Jake's wife, Zoey, suddenly finds herself in a place with no light, no heat, and no air. And no way home. The urgent question was where, precisely where, but that turned out to be a problem so complex that even the entire gang, equipped with teleportation, time travel, and telepathic syntony, might not be able to crack it in time.