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.
Archer is hired to track down the blackmailers who have created phony photos of a rich man's fiancee in pornographic poses.
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.