In California, if a person is convicted of two serious crimes and is then found guilty of any subsequent crime, he or she is automatically subject to a prison sentence of twenty-five years to life. This is called the Third Strike law. Nina Reilly's new case is difficult from the start: her young client is facing his Third Strike, and stands accused of grave robbingand of killing the fresh corpse found on top of the coffin. He insists he is innocent of both crimes, and claims he was hired to dig up the grave of Constantin Zhukovsky, who, according to his headstone, was once 'Page to the Tsar'. But who is Zhukovsky, and could he possibly have a connection to the Russian royal family, murdered during the revolution? The sudden disappearance of his bones causes further problems for Nina, and her client's denial is on shaky ground when the murder victim turns out to be one of his classmates. With her client remaining tight-lipped about why he was at Zhukovsky's grave and evidence piling up against him, Nina's got a tough battle aheadone that stretches from the law courts and classrooms of modern-day California, to the intrigues of the Russian Revolution