Producer Marcus Riley believes dangerous stories belong on screen. That changes when Charlie Foster, a former Hollywood prop buyer now scraping by on Venice Beach, presses a riddle into his hand. Hours later, Charlie is found dead outside Sunset Circus, a pawn shop in Los Angeles.

When the police start asking questions, Marcus realises Charlie’s puzzle points to the Miksas, a Nevada crime family built on two buried secrets: a fortune in Romanov treasure smuggled out of Russia by Olga Miksa’s father, and an act of Cold War betrayal that bought the family’s immunity from East and West alike.

With his partner, designer Melinda ‘Mako’ de Turris, Marcus follows the trail into the Nevada desert, uncovering an assault on Charlie’s daughter at The Mighty Bison casino and the theft of an artefact the Miksas must recover, one that ties back to the lost Tobolsk urns and the Eremin Letters, and forward to Stalin’s darkest secret. Olga and her daughter Lexi Miksa will do whatever it takes to hold on to power, and the deeper Marcus and Mako dig, the higher the body count climbs. Riley digs into the past, but he could end up digging a grave for himself.