Years after a series of random murders took place in 2017, book author Michael Lane suddenly begins receiving haunting calls from the unknown. Instead of focusing on the encore to his successful debut book, he becomes obsessed with this mystery and spirals out of control as he unravels each victim caught in the web of a sadistic killer.

A series of cryptic phone messages and visions haunt a writer while he struggles to finish a novel. As they increase in intensity, he loses his grip on reality, eventually obsessing over an old mystery that will lead to horrific revelations about both him and his loyal wife.

In the wake of a career-ending scandal, disgraced lawyer Lawson Russell moves to Key West, where he befriends aging novelist Christopher Marlowe. After letting Russell borrow his latest manuscript, Marlowe dies of a heart attack. When Russell publishes the dead man's manuscript under his own name, he makes the best-seller list—and unwittingly becomes the prime suspect in the investigation of a grisly multiple homicide.