Private Detective Lew Archer encounters a con man who uses naive teenagers to extort huge sums of money from their wealthy parents.

Archer helps the operator of a delicatessen who claims he was swindled out of his property by the county tax collector.

When a man he is investigating is found dead, Archer becomes the prime suspect for the murder.

A woman who initially panicked after hitting a man with her car returns to the scene only to find that his body has disappeared. She hires Archer to find out what happened.

A dying mobster hires Archer to find the wife and son he abandoned years earlier, so that he can give them some of his ill-gotten money.