It's 1940. Canadian journalist Mike Ward, fresh off assignments in Paris, London, Moscow, and Berlin, thinks he's seen it all. Yet despite his tenure in fascist Europe, nothing could have prepared him for his latest posting: Hollywood, where the glitz and glamour of the silver screen mingles with the grit and grime of the criminal underworld. Ward's latest assignment, to cover the "suicide" of a studio executive, is bound to drag him deeper into the shadows of America's bright lights.