Mike Hodges writes and directs this British comedy thriller starring Michael Caine as Mickey King, a successful crime writer living in Rome. When an agent offers him an extraordinarily generous sum of money to ghostwrite the autobiography of a mystery celebrity, King is intrigued and agrees to the offer. He is taken to a beautiful and remote Mediterranean island where he meets his subject, Preston Gilbert (Mickey Rooney), a retired movie star famous for his gangster roles and known for his off-set liaisons with real mobsters. King puts pen to paper at once but is left with no conclusion to his book after Gilbert is murdered at a party. Desperate to find out who was behind the killing, King digs deeper into Gilbert's mysterious past and soon begins to uncover some strange and unpalatable truths...