Lt. Frank Hastings gets a case that has all the material to create a colorful tableau of murder. Thomas King, film maker, wealthy but profligate, ends up slashed and dead in the apartment of a girl who poses nude by day and sells sex by night. A trail of evidence leads to Arnold Clark. It figures: Clark has a rap sheet a mile-long -- and he's been keeping King's wife company.

Case closed? Not quite. A second murder introduces contradictory new evidence. Now Hastings has to rework the entire puzzle to come up with a finished portrait of a crime -- with no pieces left over.

"Wilcox shuffles the plot and characters for the sheer joy of confounding us. Great detective fun." (B-O-T Editorial Review Board)