A failed musician obsessed with avant-garde art enters a shadowy world where bohemian excess meets the avaricious interests of a real estate cabal. Alexander Otkazov is finished with Montreal. Having wasted his youth on classical music and bohemian excess, he's ready for a life of anonymous condo towers and profitable boredom. But when he starts a new job as a journalist, he comes to realize that the world he is so anxious to leave behind is not quite finished with him yet, and that art and money might be more closely related than he thinks. Chasing a series of stories that take him from Forest Hill mansions to the bottom of Halifax Harbour, Alexander enters a world full of wonder, megalomania, and finance capitalism. As he tries to unravel the threads tying everything he loves to everything he hates, he is forced to confront his own most sordid desires -- and the lengths he is willing to go to achieve his dreams of an easy life.