Bookseller and amateur sleuth Delaney Nichols finds a dead body in a castle outside Edinburgh and must investigate how this murder is connected to a rare manuscript.

Delaney Nichols has eased into her new life in Edinburgh and doesn’t miss her old life in Kansas at all. Her job at the Cracked Spine, a bookshop that specializes in rare manuscripts as well as other sundry valuable historical objects, is going swimmingly. One day, Edwin MacAlister, Delaney’s boss, sends her to Castle Doune, an hour outside the city limits. There she is to meet a contact and pick up a hard-to-find edition of an old Scottish comic, an “Oor Wullie.”

While taking in the sights from the castle’s ramparts, Delaney sees a sandal-clad foot. That foot is attached to a man in an old-fashioned costume, and he matches the description of man who was supposed to bring the Oor Wullie. He’s dead, but there are no visible reasons as to why or how. As Delaney goes to call the police, she spots some papers fluttering around a side wall. When she discovers that it’s the Oor Wullie, she can’t fight the urge to take it and hide it under her jacket. It’s not until she returns to the Cracked Spine that she realizes just how complicated this story is; she endeavors to untangle the tricky plot of why someone wanted this man dead, but not before putting herself in danger.