'My favourite American crime-writer' New York Herald Tribune

Charles O'Connor of the Glendale police and Vic Varallo are having dinner with their wives when they are interrupted by a call informing them of murder. The victim is an old, nearly blind woman, killed in her daughter's flat.

This is the first of a spate of crimes including a serial dog thief, the hit-and-run killing of a young mother and her two children, a knife fight and a row of flower pots - growing marijuana. All in a day's work for the Glendale P. D.