Eleanor Nash should be on top of the world. As the author of the wildly successful Vacation Mystery series, she's currently working on the 10th book in the series. There's nothing she'd like more, however, than to kill off her popular character Connor Smith, and start fresh with a new set of characters. Unfortunately, Connor Smith isn't only a character in her novels, he's also an ex-lover who's blackmailing her. After a whirlwind romance in which she and Connor solved a series of bank robberies in Rome, she came home to write down what happened in an effort to sort it all out for herself. When the manuscript found its way to a publisher, she was unexpectedly a best-selling author. When Connor got wind of the fact, as well as finding out his name and adventures were being used in the book, he insisted that Eleanor give him part of her advance and royalties from future books. Eleanor agrees because there is more to their Roman adventures than has come out in public. Eleanor and her sister/assistant Harper are returning to Italy on a book tour accompanied by other authors who have connections to her books, fan club contest winners, and, of course, Connor. During the trip, Eleanor hopes to figure out how she can kill off Connor in the books so that her association with him will be over. Then Connor tells her that he's sure someone is really trying to kill him, so Eleanor has to figure out if he's just being paranoid or if there are others who want him dead as much as she does. It turns out there are many who fit that profile. When Eleanor has some odd things happen to her as well, she begins to wonder who the real target is.

The book was set out in an unusual way with plenty of footnotes that show the author's inner thoughts, give more background, use celebrities to describe what various characters look like, and remind us often that Eleanor herself is a liar. So we are unsure how much of the events being described can be taken at face value. I enjoyed the story but all the footnotes were difficult to toggle back and forth between in an ebook.