Sutter Cane is this century's most widely read author. His novels have been translated into 18 different languages, and spawned a billion dollar industry. When Cane vanishes just days before he's expected to deliver his latest manuscript, his publisher Jackson Harglow hires John Trent to investigate his mysterious disappearance. With the writer's fans whipped into a public frenzy, Trent believes the case is nothing but an ill conceived publicity stunt--until he and Cane's editor, Linda Styles, travel to New England in search of clues. There, they wind up in a town called Hobbs End, a sleepy hamlet that cannot be found on any ordinary map--a fictional village that exists only in Cane's novels. Has the investigation unearthed a fantasy world or has reality blended with the macabre imagination of Sutter Cane?