Amy Chua

Mrs Bainbridge, I'm giving you a chance to help your family. We know one of your three granddaughters is a murderer. I can convict all three as co-conspirators, or you can tell me which one did it, and I'll spare the other two... Berkeley, California 1944 : When a former presidential candidate is assassinated at the opulent Claremont Hotel, Detective Al Sullivan's investigation brings up the spectre of another tragedy that took place there ten years earlier : the death of seven-year-old Iris Stafford, a member of the wealthy and influential Bainbridge family.
Some say she haunts the Claremont still. The many threads of the case keep leading Sullivan back to the three remaining Bainbridge heiresses, now adults : Iris's sister, Isabella, and her cousins Cassie and Nicole. Determined not to let anything distract him from the truth - not the powerful influence of Bainbridges' grandmother, or the political aspirations of Berkeley's district attorney, or the interest of Chinese first lady Madame Chiang Kai-Shek - Sullivan follows his investigation to its devastating conclusion.