When his friend, Cassiopeia Vitt finds herself in a jam, Cotton Malone agrees to help. However, as he investigates why anybody would want to harm his friend, he realizes that she is in the middle of an international conspiracy. Consequently, Malone finds himself going up against his former boss and stumbles upon a plot to covertly control the world.

A mysterious manuscript discovered in the tomb of Charlemagne sends Cotton Malone on a perilous international quest that takes him and twin sisters with their own agenda from an ancient German cathedral to the harsh, unforgiving world of Antarctica in pursuit of the truth about the death of his father on a classified sub mission beneath Antarctica.

A local election becomes complicated when a candidate is murdered and bookshop owner Tricia Miles must clear her sister's name and find the real killer in the seventh installment of the New York Times best-selling mystery series.