When bartender Brian McNulty is accused of murdering a woman, he turns to his friend, librarian-sleuth Raymond Ambler, for help. As Ambler pursues his third investigation (after Murder in the Manuscript Room), he discovers that the victim, Shannon Darling—whose life had been a whirl of drunken one-night stands—was also Dr. Sandra Dean, who lived in a gated community with a doting husband and a young daughter. While NYPD homicide detective Mike Cosgrove becomes increasingly sure that McNulty is the culprit, Ambler wonders: did the murderer set out to kill the wild-living Shannon, or her more genteel suburban Dr. Dean?