City editor Josie Braun finds a shoe that reopens the mystery of Zelda Machinko, a crime-fighting editor who disappeared 30 years before. As the spirit of Zelda reveals her tale, the problems of the past intertwine with the people and places of the present. The gritty gangsters of Zelda's world in the 1950s collide with the government graft uncovered by the Jordan Daily News in the 1980s.