Leonard Schiller once counted among New York's literary lions, but illness and ten years of writer's block have lowered his profile, almost to the point of obscurity. When Heather Wolfe, an ambitious literature major, asks to interview him for her thesis on his work, her interest forces him to address the issues that he has avoided all these years, and stirs in him feelings he has long forgotten, much to his daughter's consternation.

A film noir buff to the extreme is given a taste of his own medicine and has his life turned upside down by a kooky femme fatale with a big adventure in mind. Sometimes love is stranger than fiction.

As homicide detective Thomas Craven investigates the death of his activist daughter, he uncovers not only her secret life, but a corporate cover-up and government collusion that attracts an agent tasked with cleaning up the evidence.