Detectives Anya Roberts and Moss Stone are faced with the murder of an actor in a live play performance. The amateur play was being performed during the Edmonton Fringe Festival in a modest sized theatre. Ironically, the play itself was a murder mystery. The victim, a quiet man, turns out to have had a past. Meanwhile the detectives investigate another murder, this one a small time criminal shot dead in a parking lot shortly after an altercation in a bar. A third murder occurs in a neighbouring city, investigated by the RCMP who contact Stone because the victim previously lived in Edmonton. Stone is convinced all three murders are related. Roberts is convinced he needs to take a reality pill.