You shouldn’t be here. It’s too late. . . .

These, heard over the phone, are the last recorded words of successful celebrity-divorce lawyer Richard Pryce, found bludgeoned to death in his bachelor pad with a bottle of wine–a 1982 Chteau Lafite worth 2,000, to be precise.

Odd, considering he didn’t drink. Why this bottle? And why those words? And why did the killer paint a three-digit number on the wall? And, most important, which of the man’s many, many enemies did the deed?

Baffled, the police are forced to bring in Private Investigator Daniel Hawthorne and his sidekick, the author Anthony Horowitz–who’s really getting rather good at this murder investigation business.

But as Hawthorne takes on the case with characteristic relish, it becomes clear that he, too, has secrets to hide. As our reluctant narrator becomes ever more embroiled in the case, he realizes that these secrets must be exposed–even at the risk of death.