When young archaeologist Maddy Crowe is drafted in to work as costume advisor on a major feature film about a Roman emperor, she soon finds herself in the bitchy, backbiting company of Hollywood actors - and a long way from her normal, comparatively safe world of academia. A London party for the movie's researchers is interrupted by an unknown writer who claims that the director stole his plot, and twenty minutes later a shot is fired through the restaurant window, wounding both the special effects man and the historian who scripted the film. The writer inevitably becomes the prime suspect, but his wife immediately implores Maddy to help. Maddy has her own doubts that the historian was even the intended target of the shooting, and so embarks on an investigation in an attempt to clear the writer's name. What she discovers is a tale of longheld grudges, bitter rivalry, massive egos, and dangerously ambitious people that could itself be the basis of a Hollywood movie.