Walter Stackhouse is an architect by day, and a wanna-be novelist by night. He writes short-story crime fiction and is fascinated by a recent murder in 1960 of a local woman. He meets her husband by visiting the man's used bookstore. Stackhouse has a troubled marriage, and his wife turns up dead. The police detective investigating both deaths suspects each husband of killing his wife, and a possible connection between the two crimes. As the investigation continues, the plot twists set in, leading up to the unexpected and dark ending.