Russian-American writer Ilana Yushka became famous when she wrote a memoir about the criminal activities of her father and his business associates. She has been unable to complete any written work since the publication of that memoir, and she is facing financial problems. She announces that she is working on another memoir, and receives payment in advance from her publisher. She is violently murdered shortly after, and her severed head is send to her publisher. Goren and Eames discover that her new memoir would cover her adolescent years in the 1970s, when she was a student at a boarding school. She was going to expose the secrets of a past lover from that period, and the detectives question a hand full of the male and female students which she had dated at that time. Goren finds out that Ilana was arrested with a secret lover in 1978, and that said lover had impersonated the sister of a particularly wealthy classmate. He also finds out that this classmate was connected to a poisoning case from 1974. Realizing that Ilana knew the identity of the poisoner, Goren tries to determine which of Ilana's "friends" killed her and what was the motive of the previous murder.
—Dimos I