Frank Bigelow is a private detective hired to follow the husband of a St. Augustine socialite. It's a routine assignment until he discovers that he's been secretly poisoned and has only days to live. With the clock ticking, Bigelow descends into a world of crooks and double-dealers, treacherous women and violent men, slashing through a tangle of conspiracies to figure out who "killed" him and why. Along the way, he must also confront the toxic effects of his own isolation. Can he solve the mystery, exact his revenge, and save his own soul before time runs out?

When a psychiatric doctor researches a young girls' diary to find out why she murdered her entire family, he begins to fall into the same state of insomnia and confusion that led her to lose her mind.