What if you could tell someone was a killer just by looking at them?
Robbie Brownlow can - just an ordinary San Diego detective until he plunges six storeys from a burning hotel. He wakes up with the usual scars and broken bones but this time there's something different. Synaesthesia. The ability to see words and emotions as colours now makes Robbie a human lie detector.
It's a condition Gus Asplundth could have done with himself. Hired to look into rumours surrounding a certain madam's Little Black Book, he finds much more than just the usual round of losers and sad husbands. But the information that would cost the city its reputation ends up costing him his life.
Now Robbie's got the book. And with the killers after him, he's about to find out it's the last thing he wants…