A long shadow looms above her. Then a hand clamps over her mouth and a blade sinks into her back. Blood splatters on the film reel case beside her, and a young life is cut short.

Lawyer Matthew Hope gets a call from Carlton Markham, who’s been arrested for his filmmaker wife’s murder but says he didn’t do it. Witnesses fly forward to proclaim his guilt, but Markham’s not giving up that easily on his innocence. And when Matthew digs deeper into the victim’s business—from heavy financial backers to sleazy egomaniacs—he finds she may not have been the perfect lady she had seemed. The one piece of evidence that could set Markham free and finger the real killer is the victim’s film reel. Only it’s gone, along with the film’s sexy star. Now Matthew needs to infiltrate the seedy side of the film industry in order to find the missing reel and solve the murder.

From master storyteller Ed McBain, Puss in Boots is another Matthew Hope Mystery classic, the tale of a woman who aimed too high and the many men who fell for it all.