When a woman goes missing on her fifth wedding anniversary, her diary reveals hidden turmoil in her marriage, while her husband, desperate to clear himself of suspicion, realizes that something more disturbing than murder may have occurred.
The editor of "The Review of Applied Ethics" and a curious lover of puzzles, Isabel Dalhousie decides to investigate when she witnesses the fatal fall of a young man and discovers that he had been probing misdeeds at his brokerage firm.