Haunted by the suicide of his friend, the true crime writer Julian Wells, Philip Anders starts to reread his books. And in their pages, he starts to glimpse a darkness that might drive a man to suicide.

In an effort to understand Julian's death, Anders travels to Paris, revisiting the places that Julian used as the research and settings for his books. But even as he embarks on this personal quest, Anders is plagued by the memory of a woman the two men once knew. And he comes to wonder if her disappearance, long ago, may be the crime that drove his friend to take his own life...