Fans have been fed short rations when it comes to Kinsey Millhone's past. We know of the aunt who raised her, the second husband who left her, the long-lost family up the California coast. But husband number one, vice-cop Mickey Macgruder, remained a mystery, until now. The call came from a guy who scavenges defaulted storage units and came up wit a box of documents about her. Curious, she hands over a twenty and amid childhood memorabilia finds an old undelivered letter. The letter will force Kinsey to reexamine her beliefs about the breakup of her first marriage, about the honor of the first husband, about an old unsolved murder... and it will put her life in the gravest peril.