The eve of World War Two. A Hollywood producer's murdered wife. Her husband's guilty memory of a shipboard romance. A stolen painting signed "Picasso." French gangsters. A beautiful courtesan. A shootout in a brasserie. All of these and more confront Private Detective Riley Fitzhugh, as he travels from Hollywood to the Riviera, Paris and London, in search of his client's vanished Dream Girl - as well as some answers: Was the painting a genuine Picasso, or just a clever forgery? Who was responsible for the corpses that kept littering his path and complicating the investigation? And whatever happened to Amanda Billingsgate?