When Chet Falcon returns to Los Angeles in the summer of 1945, his intention is to jump start his private investigator business, but his first big case begins to spiral out of control almost at once. Haunted by the deaths of his friends on Guadalcanal, and drinking heavily, Falcon is asked to investigate the disappearance of silent film actor Curtis Sterling twelve years earlier, but there are people who don't want to talk about Sterling. Soon Falcon is up against a complex mystery that involves sex, greed and family ties. Chet Falcon had survived the war, but surviving the mean streets of Hollywood will push him beyond the limits of endurance in this hard-boiled fast-action thriller.