San Francisco attorney Clara Quillen is contacted by SFPD Detective Roy Travis again, this time because Vivian Hall, a beautiful young professor who went to the same law school as Clara, has been murdered. The body was found in the same place where Kim Novak jumped into San Francisco Bay in the movie Vertigo, and Clara considers some of the film's other locations for possible links to the murderer. She also takes a part-time teaching job at the law school where Vivian was a professor. As Clara digs for the truth, various suspects gradually emerge: students, professors, and others related to the work Vivian did on be behalf of abused and neglected children. Meanwhile, in the course of the investigation, Clara finds herself becoming romantically involved with an attractive judge—who she suspects may not have been completely honest about his relationship with Vivian...