In a small Virginia city nonetheless reeling from international battle II, a photo of an attractive murdered girl propels 3 teens into the center of a wide-ranging mystery.

A lurid crime scene picture of an attractive lady arrives on secret author Bunny Prescott's doorstep with out go back address—and it is not the 1st time she's visible it. The reemergence of the photograph, taken fifty-five years prior, units her on a trip to reconstruct the vicious summer time that modified her life.

In the summer season of 1945, Ceola Bliss is a lonely twelve-year-old tomboy, mourning the lack of her brother, Robbie, who used to be declared lacking within the Pacific. She attempts to piece jointly his lifestyles through rereading his favourite pulp detective tale “A Date with loss of life” and spending time together with his ally, Jay Greenwood, in Royal Oak, VA. One unforgettable August day, Jay leads Ceola and Bunny to a stretch of woods the place he came across a lifeless lady, but if they come, the physique is long past. They quickly find a neighborhood lady named Lily Vellum is lacking and start to piece jointly the threads of her homicide, beginning with the photo Jay took of her deserted body.

As Ceola will get swept up taking part in woman detective, Bunny turns into more and more skeptical of Jay, and starts off her personal research into the relationship among Jay and Lily. She discovers a chain of clues that position doubt at the identification of the corpse and Jay’s tale of the way he discovered it, and trips to Washington, D.C. looking for Lily. In D.C., Bunny is compelled to acknowledge the brutal fact approximately her pricey buddy, and units off a chain of occasions that might deliver tragedy to Jay and a long time of estrangement among her and Ceola.