Robert Campbell, a respected and beloved high school English teacher, is leading a quiet life in early retirement when a neighbor notices several newspapers lying on his front porch, untouched. He searches the house and finds nothing disturbed-except that Campbell isn't there, and clearly hasn't been for a while. With public concern growing, police launch an investigation, and after weeks of trying, turn up nothing: no suggestions of foul play; no encouraging leads; no clues at all. His friends are worried, rumors are multiplying, the town is becoming traumatized, and tensions are reaching the breaking point. Something has to give. In this fifth Lew Travis mystery, the seventy-two-year-old curmudgeon is faced with this dire situation, set in his old gold-rush town in the Sierra Nevada foothills.