President Timothy Kegan has been assassinated - shot dead in a motorcade. A presidential commission condemns a lone psychopath as the killer and America settles down to mourn its dead. But fourteen years later, the confession of a dying man rouses Tim's half brother, Nick, to reassess the story behind his brother's death. Soon he is drawn into a murky underworld of oil kings, mobsters and starlets on the make, where nothing is what it seems. And as paranoia takes hold, Nick must follow a trail that leads into the black heart of a very American dream...