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with the murder of an author of lurid private-eye paperback novels and the theft of his computer, containing his last unpublished book...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?

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...