John Colby, an old friend of Starsky and Hutch's, returns to town, and asks them to use their connections to help him find his ex-wife Karen. But as they look for the woman, the duo find that there are things that don't quite add up, and, unbeknownst to them, the man holds a sinister and deadly secret.

An execution-style shooting in which two young lovers are brutally killed indicates that the intended targets were actually Bay City Police Detectives Starsky and Hutchinson, when the victims' car turns out to match Starksy's. All leads point toward a local crime-lord awaiting trial as being behind their (intended) murders. But when he flatly denies the charge, the pair set out to hunt down the real culprits... and motive.