The murderer of Adam Diehl, a reclusive rare-book collector, begins to stalk Adam's sister's lover Will -- a convicted literary forger -- under the guise of letters from long-dead authors, and soon Will realizes that this killer threatens everything he holds dear. "The rare book world is stunned when a reclusive collector, Adam Diehl, is found on the floor of his Montauk home: hands severed, surrounded by valuable inscribed books and original manuscripts...

Looks into the 1897 diary of Captain Simonini, an antisemitic Italian in Paris who forges documents for the highest bidder, providing conspiracies and scapegoats for factions all over Europe, and is behind the most notorious forgery of all.