When an Arctic explorer is killed during a polar expedition, the mysterious circumstances of his death take Castle and Beckett from the penthouses of Park Avenue to the halls of the CIA. But Castle's delight at the case's many twists and turns soon turns to frustration as he realizes that their elusive killer might just be fooling them all.

As Halloween approaches, Castle and Beckett are called to a graveyard where the body of a young man sporting vampire fangs has been discovered with a wooden stake driven through his heart. Their investigation takes them deep into the heart of New York's underground vampire fetish community, where they learn that the motive for the victim's murder may be hiding within the pages of the graphic novel he was writing before his death.