A missing tenant, an irate mother-in-law, and a killer hiding in a Toronto rooming house -- out-of-work PI Patrick Bird is back in business. Patrick Bird thought he was helping his mother-in-law collect the rent from a wayward tenant at her Ossington Avenue rooming house, not diving into an investigation. When Bird discovers Jack Turner's third-floor darkroom is demolished and the photographer is missing, the other tenants come under scrutiny: Mr. Yusuf, an international student training to be a doctor; Danny Blinken, a shifty and belligerent taxi driver; and Shirley Burton, a young nurse far from home.As Bird investigates, he uncovers information about a fourth tenant who formerly lived at the rooming house. James Earl Ray, who assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. just weeks earlier, had been hiding out in a room on the second floor under a pseudonym.

From there, the case takes Bird and the police down a rabbit hole of intrigue reaching all the way to the top of one of the most famous assassinations in history, and leading our truculent PI to just about the toughest spot he could imagine.