Harry Kramer and Maggie Parker are quintessential New York City used and rare book dealers who love nothing more than tending to their bookstore and indulging their passion for the written word. An elderly woman approaches them with an unsigned, yellowed manuscript that she claims was written by her husband who mysteriously vanished some fifty years prior. The problem is a book by another author, very much alive, has just been published—and it's identical to her husband's manuscript.

The old woman is convinced that this living author stole the manuscript and that he holds the answer to her husband's disappearance. When she asks Harry and Maggie to prove her husband was the true author, they unexpectedly find themselves thrust into the role of literary sleuths.

After their client is found murdered, Harry and Maggie are determined to find out who is so threatened by the manuscript and, more to the point, why? Unearthing the dark past of the author leads to the unraveling of a vicious scheme of blackmail and money laundering that could expose a family secret that one person will go to any length to ensure is never revealed.