Amateur sleuth Cummings Flynn Wanamaker attends the monthly meeting of a steampunk occult group in Chicago, where a speaker combusts—perhaps spontaneously. Meanwhile, a body is discovered in a boat in rural Maine. To solve the connected crimes in this funny and eccentric mystery, Cummings navigates quirky clues and characters, including an ethereal gay romance novelist, a broken-down recluse who once wrote Cold War thrillers, assorted occultists with assumed names, a museum devoted to ephemera, a pagan reliquary and fetid feta cheese.