In 2010, Cormoran Strike, a private investigator who is an ex-SIB investigator who lost part of a leg in a bombing in Afghanistan,is broke, and his birth father's business agent is calling in the loan that he gave to Strike to open his office. At that point, Strike is hired by John Bristow, the adoptive brother of supermodel Lula Landry who had fallen from her balcony three months previously. Bristow wants Strike to investigate his sister's supposed suicide.