Dead men don’t tell tales…or do they?
When San Francisco detective Franklin Washborne starts seeing Robert Louis and Fanny Stevenson around town, he assumes he’s hallucinating.
Thirty-seven years old, Franklin suffers from residual PTSD, a result of his military service in Afghanistan. And after a dozen years on the force, he’s also become disquieted by the mindless violence of the crimes he's investigating and disaffected with a police culture which only seems to exacerbate his symptoms.
Washborne is investigating the murder of Matt Glover, a young software engineer whose body was discovered on Lombard Street with no clues about motives. Franklin identifies several persons of interest and finds himself drawn into a world of high-tech computerized pharma-cology and a 40-year-old commune movement where the 1960s still live on. Myra, Matt's girlfriend, lives in the commune, a place where drugs and casual sex are accepted forms of “responsible hedonism”. Matt's roommate Henry Qu, a fellow scientist at Janus Health, may have been in love with Myra and jealous of Matt's success at work. And the commune's leader has tried to enlist Matt's help in a bizarre drug scheme, threatening to blackmail him if Matt refused.
Convinced that Matt's life was more complicated than friends and family suspected, Franklin begins questioning other acquaintances. From Dr. Walker, Matt's boss at Janus Health, he learns that Matt was involved in the design of a novel and potentially lucrative artificial intelligence program. Matt was also co-author of a computer poker program that attracted police attention. Greed, jealousy, drugs, gambling, revenge—all could be motives for the murder of a man who appears to have led a double life.
Franklin also meets Elizabeth Mills, a literary tour guide and TV host who knew both Matt and Myra. But the investigation quickly deteriorates into a labyrinth of dead ends, and Franklin finds himself increasingly plagued by vivid nightmares and daytime apparitions of former residents of the city who have been dead for 100 years. Either Franklin is losing his mind, or something very strange is going on