Roy Milano, a self-described movie detective who is devoted to finding, hoarding, and reciting arcane information about films, once again stumbles into a murder case--this one centering on a copy of Jerry Lewis's infamous uncompleted film. The Day the Clown Cried, shot in Sweden in 1972. Though rough cuts were apparently screened for the filmmaker's colleagues and Hollywood insiders, the movie was quickly suppressed and never exhibited to the general public or to any critic or film historian. And now certain cinema buffs are ready to kill to possess that elusive footage. It's up to Roy to save the day, and the film, before everything unspools.

Roy Milano is no Sam Spade. But when this divorced movie geek stumbles onto the trail of Orson Welles' long-lost masterpiece, The Magnificent Ambersons, he can't help but take the case. The usual suspects prove to be anything but--a bodybuilding film fanatic obsessed with bizarre rumors about an A-list actress; a rotund reporter who holds Hollywood in thrall via Internet dispatches from his parents' basement; and a starstruck street punk with a thousand voices. And then there's the transatlantic love triangle that finds Roy caught between his very own Gal Friday and a sultry Spanish siren with a stunning secret. But when the bodies start falling, Roy must cut to the chase in his quest to save the Holy Grail of cinema before everything fades to black.

Nashville private detective Jared McKean has spent most of his thirty-six years trying to live up to the memory of the father he barely knew.

One day, the body of a young Vietnamese woman is found in Jared s office dumpster clutching a yellowed photo of Jared s father. A few days later, another Vietnamese woman, Khanh, appears on Jared s doorstep claiming to be his half-sister and begging him to help find her missing daughter, Tuyet. Still reeling from the revelation of his father s secret life, Jared reluctantly agrees.

It s clear that Tuyet s path must have crossed the dead girl s, but when and how? While the police have their hands full with a renegade bomber, Jared and Khanh form an uneasy alliance, following the trail into the violent world of human trafficking a world that few who enter ever leave."