Frank & Joe team up with Nancy Drew again in Los Angeles to attend the 14th Annual Detectives' Convention at a TV & movie studio to uncover an identity of a murderer called the Hollywood Phantom who has been abducting convention attendees and also leaving mutilated photos of Nancy, the Hardy's and other people involved with the convention with the heads of the photo's cut off and a deadly note on the back of the picture which the Phantom is basing on a story of a show where there's people missing one by one from a photographic picture and it's starting to happen to the people at the convention and the pics of their heads are starting to be placed on the photograph. While going through a tour through the studio on the tour tram each passenger that received the headless pic's disappear during the tour through the studio. The three top detectives Arlo Weatherly, Phil Bronson and Fenton Hardy are kidnapped for ransom and only pieces of their personal belongings are left in a note that only 500,000 will free them and not to call the police. Joe gets bound and gagged by the Phantom, which leads him to thrash about wildly in an attempt to free himself and Nancy chases the Phantom and enters Stage 24 where she spots a full shot pic of herself with the Hardy boys and then gets dropped into the lake of Stage 24 as well as being attacked by a mechanical fake shark then nearly gets run over by a truck. A spooky tale this one is.