"Having survived the hire of such movie luminaries as Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis, Charlie Chaplin, Mae West, and, most recently, Cary Grant, private eye Toby Peters finds himself, on his twenty-third outing, in the employ of an edgy Joan Crawford." "Actually, Toby needs Miss Crawford no less than she needs him. His long-time friend and office mate, the melancholy and painfully inept dentist Sheldon Minck, has been jailed for murder - the victim being Minck's estranged wife, Mildred; the motive, a two-hundred-thousand-dollar inheritance; the weapon, a crossbow. Only Miss Crawford, the single witness to the crime, can attest to hapless Minck's innocence. The former MGM movie queen, however, has just been offered her first film in two years, as the title character in Mildred Pierce, so she is anxious to avoid any unpleasant publicity that could cost her the role." While Toby's task is plain - solve the crime, save Minck, and keep the reluctant Miss Crawford's famous name out of the daily papers - it is also perilously complicated by the Survivors of the Fittest. A bizarre group of survivalists led by an axe-wielding ex-Marine named Lawrence Timerjack and masterminded by the shadowy, elusive James Fennimore Sax, they have good reason to spring their recent recruit, Sheldon Minck, from jail. They want him out, because they want him dead.