It's 1924 and spiritualist-medium Daisy Gumm and her fiancé, Detective Sam Rotondo, discover a dead body tucked away in the Pasadena Public Library's bibliography stacks. Worse, Daisy's old friend, Mr. Browning, is holding the bloody knife, putting him at the very top of Sam's suspect list. But Daisy isn't convinced and sets out to exonerate her friend, only to stumble into a professor's geological study, encounter a mad scientist, and uncover a phony gold rush that someone is killing to hide.