Devil's Garden

San Francisco, September 1921: Silent-screen comedy star Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle is throwing a wild party in his suite at the St. Francis Hotel—girls, jazz, bootleg hooch...

And a dead actress named Virginia Rappe.

The D.A. says it was Arbuckle who killed her—crushed her under his weight—and brings him up on manslaughter charges. William Randolph Hearst's newspapers stir up the public and demand a guilty verdict. But what really happened? Why do so many people at the party have conflicting stories? Why is the prosecution hiding witnesses? Why is Hearst so determined to see Arbuckle convicted?

And why are there body parts missing from the autopsied corpse?

In desperation, Arbuckle's defense team hires an operative from the famed Pinkerton detective agency to investigate and, they hope, discover the truth. The agent's name is Dashiell Hammett...and what he discovers will change American legal history—and his own life—forever.