It features Kinsey Millhone, a private detective based in the fictional city of Santa Teresa, California.

[1] The novel, set in 1989, finds Kinsey getting pulled into a decade-old case involving a sexual assault at an elite private school.

[2] In 1979 Iris Lehmann steals a test to help her best friend, Poppy Earl, a fellow student at a private high school in Santa Teresa.

In an interview with NPR on August 20, 2017, Grafton stated the basis of the book was an amalgamation of two actual events: "The origin was a case that happened in Santa Barbara, where a kid was picked up because his brother owed $1,500 to a drug dealer.

Second part of the plot was from a case down in Orange County, where some kids –always kids– assaulted a girl and filmed it and then circulated this bunch of photographs, which she knew nothing about until somebody told her.