Halloween Night, 1954.
A young, film-obsessed scriptwriter has just been hired at one of the great studios. Fresh from writing pulp stories, he arrives on the lot to script a monster movie with his oldest friend, an effects artist building miniature dinosaurs on Stage 13.
Before midnight, a typed note on his office desk lures him into the adjacent cemetery, promising a great revelation. Climbing through the dark, he stumbles across a macabre sight that plunges him into a frantic hunt across phantom backlot sets and secret vaults.
An anonymous investigation leads from the giant Maximus Films backlot to an eerie graveyard separated from the studio by a single wall. There he makes a terrifying discovery that thrusts him into a maelstrom of intrigue and mystery—and into the dizzy exhilaration of the movie industry at the height of its glittering power.
Teaming with a cynical Venice detective, he uncovers an escalating conspiracy that hurls him into collision with panicked studio executives.
Two rival cities divided by a single brick wall. One built of glittering movie illusions, and the other anchored in cemetery stone.
