While freelance writer Robyn Guthrie settles into her new home, which came with a few surprises, she learns her mother Lizzie, drama queen of Dryden Manor Assisted Living, has one of her own—a new boyfriend, Lionel. When he dies suddenly, leaving a pulp fiction novel in Lizzie’s care, Robyn and Lizzie soon realize he was not all he appeared to be. Lionel's mysterious past is buried in the book along with a last, desperate clue that may lead to the location of an expressionist masterpiece missing since World War II. Aided by a handsome art historian, Robyn and Lizzie attempt to decipher the clues, unaware that someone else has joined the race—a cold-blooded killer whose raison d’etre is the revenge he has sought for more than sixty years.