Hired as director of media relations for New York's famous Krinsky Research Center, ex-reporter Bert Swain is thrust into the role of detective when a member of the staff drops out of sight and a laboratory chief becomes the victim of a violent death. The great medical complex to which Krinsky belongs is engaged in a $100-million building-fund campaign and many in the community oppose the planned construction, but is their hostility so intense that it could lead to murder or is research fraud implicated in the disappearance and death? Step by step, and at increasing personal peril, our inadvertent Sherlock becomes enmeshed in high-level intrigue. Estranged from his former wife, trying to win the friendship of their preteen daughter and taking comfort where he finds it, Bert will face a final showdown with the killer—or killers—he's been pursuing just as the right woman comes into his life.