Jonathan Hoag has a curious problem.

Every evening, he finds a mysterious reddish substance under his fingernails, with no memory what he was doing during the day to get it there. Jonathan hires the husband and wife detective team of Ted and Cynthia Randall to follow him during the day and find out.

But Ted and Cynthia find themselves instantly out of their depth. Jonathan leaves no fingerprints. His few memories about his profession turn out to be false. Even stranger, Ted and Cynthia’s own memories of what happens during their investigation do not match. There is a thirteenth floor to Jonathan’s building that does not exist, there are mysterious and threatening beings living inside mirrors, and all of reality is not what they thought it was.

Part supernatural thriller, part noir detective story, Heinlein’s trip down the rabbit hole leads where you never expected.

Robert Anson Heinlein (1907–1988) was born in Missouri. He served five years in the U.S. Navy, then attended graduate classes in mathematics and physics at UCLA, took a variety of jobs, and owned a silver mine before beginning to write science fiction in 1939. His novels have won the Hugo Award, and in 1975 he received the first Grand Master Award for lifetime achievement.