San Francisco, September 1921: Silent-screen comedy star Roscoe "Fatty"
Arbuckle is throwing a wild party in his suite at the St. Francis Hotel:
girls, jazz, bootleg hooch . . . and a dead actress named Virginia
Rappe. The D.A. says it was Arbuckle who killed her - crushing her under
his weight - and brings him up on manslaughter charges. William Randolph
Hearst's newspapers stir up the public and demand a guilty verdict. But
what really happened? Why do so many people at the party seem to have
stories that conflict? Why is the prosecution hiding witnesses? Why are
there body parts missing from the autopsied corpse? Why is Hearst so
determined to see Arbuckle convicted? In desperation, Arbuckle's defense
team hires a Pinkerton agent to do an investigation of his own and, they
hope, discover the truth. The agent's name is Dashiell Hammett, the
book's narrator. What he discovers will change American legal history -
and his own life - forever.