A film studio sets out to create a documentary about the Tuskegee Airmen, a unit of African-Americans who flew combat missions in World War Two - but filming has barely begun when a corpse is found on the set. Hobart Lindsey, insurance investigator turned detective, enters the scene, aided by Marvia Plum, his policewoman girlfriend. Soon he uncovers a mystery stretching half a century into the past - and suddenly and unexpectedly is flying through a hazardous murder investigation by the seat of his pants!

Prior to World War II, black actors were restricted to minor roles in mainstream films - though there was a 'black' Hollywood that created films with all-black casts for exhibition to black audiences. When a cache of long-lost films is discovered by cinema researchers, the aged director Edward 'Speedy' MacReedy appears to reclaim his place in film history. But insurance investigator Hobart Lindsey and homicide officer Marvia Plum soon find themselves enmeshed in a frightening web of arson and murder with its roots deep in the tragic events of a past era...

A valuable cache of stolen comic books originally brought insurance investigator Hobart Lindsey and police officer Marvia Plum together. Their tumultuous relationship endured for seven years, then ended as Plum abandoned her career to return to the arms of an old flame, while Lindsey's duties carried him thousands of miles away. Now, after many years apart, the two are thrown together again by a series of crimes, beginning with the murder of an author of lurid private-eye paperback novels and the theft of his computer, containing his last unpublished book...

Veteran broadcaster 'Radio Red' Bob Bjorner is the last of the red-hot lefties working at radio station KRED in Berkeley. His paranoia makes him lock his studio against intruders while he's on the air - but his precaution doesn't save him from a horrible death that leaves him slumped at the microphone just before his three o'clock daily broadcast. Homicide detective Marvia Plum scrambles to the station to investigate. Who amongst the broadcasters, engineers, and administrators present at the station was the murderer - and why?

It's Christmas week in New York, and the frozen body of Cletus Berry, Hobart Lindsey's partner, has been found in a back alley alongside that of a known criminal. Was there a connection between the two men? This wouldn't normally be Lindsey's case, but when a man's partner is killed, he must do something about it. Now separated from Marvia Plum, Lindsey is on his own, and the body count is set to rise unless he can solve the mystery of the Silver Chariot...

When a chartered helicopter plunges into the icy waters of Lake Tahoe, killing its millionaire passenger, what seems a routine claim against a life insurance policy turns into a complex mystery for investigator Hobart Lindsey and his policewoman girlfriend Marvia Plum - for the multimillion-dollar policy is to go to an unnamed model who posed for the cover of an ephemeral mystery paperback in 1951. Lindsey's own life is in danger as he tries to find the now-aged model (if she's still alive!), on a trail full of murder and deception...