On a beautiful June day, the famous performance artist Magnifica is set to jump from a helicopter and parachute down through the Red Rock Pinnacle monuments of Sedona, Arizona. What the large and excited crowd sees instead is the massive explosion and collapse of Devil’s Finger, a thousand-foot Red Rock pinnacle.

Art sleuth Julian Peale is on the case, looking where the authorities are not—into the mysterious artworld ties to Magnifica. There’s a New York art patron, the Wall Street gambler, a cyberpunk hack, a Russian art dealer with mob ties, two rival tech millionaires, and a wealthy hippy still living in the Age of Aquarius. The artist Magnifica—Mary Saville by birth—has retreated into the shadows with her copter pilot with plans to bolster her fame. She may be heir to a fortune gathered up by her ailing mother, the once-famous artist Sophia Saville.

In search for answers, Peale moves through the LA art scene, the tech world of San Francisco, the gamers conventions in Las Vegas, the underworld of art betting and Russian organized crime, and finally to the famed counter-cultural festival in the desert of Nevada, the Oracle of Fire—where Magnifica has audacious plans to crash the party. As the dust settles in a Chicago courtroom, all the motives in this art world menagerie are revealed—especially, who blew up Devil’s Finger?