A love triangle disguised as a murder mystery. One character is murdered after revealing secrets of Mormon temple. That's not why he was murdered.
This is a book about the violation of privacy, an unauthorized account of what goes on behind closed doors. At first, it appears to be a simple murder mystery. Isaac Smith, a descendant of Joseph Smith is murdered after publishing a book analyzing the Mormon temple ritual and claiming that "The secret is that there is no secret" --- that nothing really interesting happens there. The temple covenant used to contain a clause demanding ritual suicide of anyone who revealed the secrets, so everyone assumes that must be why he's been murdered. But he does not appear to have been killed in the ritual way. The story unfolds, told primarily from the perspective of his best friend Cannon, but also from his perspective and from the perspective of Cannon's ex-wife Faye. Journeying through Cannon and Isaac's time as missionary companions, their years at Brigham Young, Isaac's childhood dealing with an absent father who'd been a Mormon bishop before running off with one of his counselors, Faye's grief over her dead brother, and Cannon's inability to fully leave the church he doesn't love, we learn that Isaac's death was the result of totally different forces.