The death of Jessica Burke was easy to explain: a history of depression, a heroin habit, a girl alone in her bathtub. But when her psychoanalyst, Daniel Abend, receives an ominous, handwritten poem, he quickly realizes that this was not just an overdose. After his daughter abruptly disappears, Daniel finds himself the subject of an elaborate and calculated torment, one that reaches back decades, crosses oceans, and begins with a chance encounter with a beguiling girl in a Paris stairwell.