In a throwback to the literary era of Mike Hammer and Shell Scott, Denver private investigator Bryson Wilde lives in an edgy 1952 world where the women are dangerous, cigarettes dangle from ruby-red lips, and the nights are hotter than whiskey-soaked jazz. So when a desperate young woman who thinks she may be the target of a killer walks in one morning and asks for his help, he's not the kind to say no just because things might get a little dicey. What he foresees is a dangerous but straightforward case. What he doesn't foresee is that he will be swept into a deadly vortex of unimaginable scope where nothing is as it seems.