Numbed after his girlfriend moves out because of his repeated failure to stop drinking, between-books novelist Jonathan Ames peruses his favorite Raymond Chandler novel, Farewell, My Lovely and is inspired to place an ad on Craigslist offering his (unlicensed) services as a private investigator. Within hours, he gets his first case involving a 19-year-old girl’s desperate search for her missing sister. Despite the fact that he should be working on his second novel, and despite the fact that he is on a deadline for a piece he’s writing for a magazine, Jonathan heads out into the urban night to track down the girl, embracing his newfound noir detective status. At the end of a very long day, Jonathan earns his fee and finds he’s got another case.