When insurance investigator Harry Reese learns his secretive wife Emmie is traveling to Portland, Maine, he fears she's heading to an assignation. Could she be meeting the mysterious stranger who called for her at the apartment? Or is she instead leading Harry into yet another befuddling murder mystery peopled by peculiar characters, with herself once again acting as befuddler-in-chief? Before this case is solved, our heroes will have gained a knowledge of cockney rhyming slang, 17th-century cant, and the mating habits of the American eel; confronted a snooping Pinkerton of fictional provenance; come to terms with a pirate publisher; and waded through a veritable ocean of false identities.