Las Vegas, 1986. A young college graduate is murdered when he is unable to pay back a loan funded by notorious criminal Lorenzo Dante.
Two years later private investigator Kinsey Millhone finds herself assisting to apprehend a shoplifter - Audrey Vance - in a shopping centre. Events take a much darker turn when Audrey's body is discovered beneath the Cold Spring Bridge, a local suicide spot.
Unable to believe she took her own life, Audrey's fiancé Marvin Striker hires Kinsey to investigate. It soon emerges that the shoplifter had become caught up in a much larger operation.