When Donald Lawson, successful mystery-story writer, is murdered, suspects include almost everyone who ever knew him. He was a man who had no friends and deserved to have none. After his death, it was discovered that he had abandoned his wife, betrayed his friends, and double-crossed every human being he had ever encountered.

The only one who ever had a kind word for him was his editor, Molly Mellinger, supposedly the number one mystery editor in New York. It is she who helps Detective Boos of the New York Police Department track down every clue and muddle through to a solution—but not before there is another murder.
Suspects include:

• Irinia Corning, Molly’s beautiful assistant, who had been involved in a homicide several years earlier and had hidden that fact very successfully until now—a fact which Lawson had been about to reveal.
• Two night club entertainers who make a specialty of insulting comedy, one of whom had a reason for being jealous of Lawson and who was a fantastic mimic—which may have helped to establish an alibi.
• Donald’s upstairs neighbor, an almost midget-like man, with a weakness for very tall sexpots.
• A very tall sexpot, who had been Lawson’s girlfriend and was currently mixed up in Oriental mumbo-jumbo.

Complications pile up endlessly, and Molly herself is in deadly peril before the surprising solution is reached.