“I’ll be dead in three months. Come tell my story.” So writes Sebastian Trapp, a reclusive mystery novelist, to his longtime correspondent Nicky Hunter, an expert in classic detective fiction. With mere months to live, Trapp invites Nicky to his spectacular San Francisco mansion to help draft his life story... while living alongside his beautiful second wife, Diana; his wayward nephew, Freddy; and his protective daughter, Madeleine.

Soon Nicky finds herself caught in an irresistible case of real-life “detective-fever.” “You and I might even solve an old mystery or two.” Twenty years earlier—on New Year’s Eve 1999—Sebastian’s first wife and teenage son vanished from different locations, a cold case that was never solved. Did the perfect crime writer commit the perfect crime? And why has he emerged from seclusion, two decades later, to allow a stranger to dig into his past?

“Life is hard. After all, it kills you.” As Nicky attempts to weave together the strands of Sebastian’s life, she becomes obsessed with discovering the truth... while Madeleine begins to question what her beloved father might actually know about that long-ago night. And when a corpse appears in the family’s koi pond, both women are shocked to find that the past isn’t gone—it’s just waiting.