Tattoo Blues is a rollicking and playful comic-mystery, featuring runaway rich kid Desiree Dean who discovers her prized tattoo is a fraud - the Chinese character etched on her left breast says "with hot sauce", not "magnificent animal" - and goes after the artist, and in the resulting confrontation accidentally sets his tattoo parlor ablaze. That results in a mysterious explosion that destroys the parlor and leaves the injured Desiree in the care of a lesbian clam pirate and turns the sleepy Florida Gulf Coast fishing village of Cedar Key upside down.