Wealthy used-car dealer Zack Tyler and his wife stop to help two men seemingly having car trouble, only for the two thugs to rob Zack, and rape and murder his wife. Starsky and Hutch work all out using their underground contacts to track down the two murderers, but they don't quite realise that once they have found the culprits, that Zack intends to get even with his wife's killers by taking the law into his own hands.

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.