Someone had murdered a Munchkin. The little man was lying on his back in the middle of the yellow brick road with his startled eyes looking into the overhead lights of an M. G. M. sound stage. He might have looked kind of cute in a tinsel-town way if it hadn't been for the knife sticking out of his chest.

The year is 1940, and Los Angeles-based private eye Toby Peters has been called before the real-life Wizard of Oz himself, Louis B. Mayer, legendary studio head of Metro-Goldwyn Mayer. His job: to track down a murderer stalking the back lots of one of Hollywood's most powerful movie companies.

Peters sets to work, plumbing the depths of a world of dreamers, child stars, and half-sized philosophers, helped by none other than Clark Gable, Raymond Chandler, and Judy Garland. It's a treacherous trail of clues that Peters must follow one as winding as the Yellow Brick Road, and deadlier than a field of poppies.

But does Toby Peters possess enough brains, heart, and courage to solve this bizarre case before he becomes the latest victim of Hollywood's new Wicked Witch of the West...?