San Francisco court stenographer Mickey Raymond wants to become the next great mystery crime novelist, but believes she has to experience life to find her stories. So she travels to Malta for a two week vacation to find that first story, with the plan being that she will insert herself into the story after the fact as its private detective heroine. She is unaware that the simple act of purchasing some postcards at a souvenir stand outside a museum would trigger that story, as one of those postcards was placed there by a man as a clue to the subject of a crime. Soon thereafter, she is mugged and people around her end up dead, she also knowing that people are after her to kill her. She gets little help from the local police, they believing she is trying to manufacture a story for her novel and ultimately believing that she may be a criminal herself and not a victim. Although ill-prepared to be that detective for real but not wanting to be a victim, she decides to find out why people would want her dead for what they believe she knows or what she has. She enlists the help of anyone who she believes she can trust, including: Terry Leonard, an American tourist for who it was hate at first sight because of his sleazy yet obvious scams to pick up women, those scams which she will learn is to hide the fact of being a nothing in his real life; Nino Tenucci, an Elvis Presley loving Italian tourist who initially tried to pick her up but eventually divulges to her that he is an investigative reporter working on a story, the story into which she has stumbled; Eva Werner, a cold-as-ice German travel critic, who nonetheless wants there to be solidarity among women; Sean and Lizzy O'Reilly, a caring elderly Irish couple staying at the same inn as her, they who believe she and Terry would make a nice couple; and a local taxi driver who does whatever he needs to to get her as his constant fare. But in the course of Mickey trying to find out what is going on, she will find that not everyone that she trusts is truly as he or she appears on the surface...