Twenty-nine-year-old Kieran O'Connor's life is messier than his studio apartment in Venice. He's being evicted. He prefers hanging out at his ex-girlfriend Claudia's coffeehouse to traveling in the Hollywood fast lane. Claudia's currently seeing a hot young female director ("I was less annoyed she'd left me than I was that she'd taken up with someone in the industry"). So when Kieran finds Hollywood's newest player, producer Monica Slezak, shot to death in the bathroom at a glittery industry banquet, he sees his chance to get off the entertainment beat and into hard news, especially since he's the first one to get a look at the suicide note.

Down on his luck, Kieran O'Connor is willing to take on any job, no matter how insignificant, and when the opportunity comes along to write the instant biography of a star who overdosed on a dangerous new drug called hot shot, he takes it, only to find he might be dealing with murder.