When the novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in Private detective Cormoran Strike. At first she thinks he has gone off by himself for a few days and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home. As Strikes investigates, it becomes clear that there is more to Quines disappearance.
The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poison pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. Central to the book is obscenity, if it were published it would ruin lives, so there are a number of people who might want to silence him. The proof copies are read by some of those in his publishing firm who pass them on to others, these copies cause havoc in the publishing world.
Plot and character are not much developed, and threaded through it are passages from the obscene book.
A.D. (Ireland, 2015)