There is a body in a gazebo, and the chief suspect is not long for this world.

Small-town lawyer and private detective Sam McCain is enjoying a cocktail party, dancing with a lovelier specimen than his five-foot-five-inch frame usually attracts, when the hostess confronts him with a problem the likes of which Good Housekeeping has never seen. There is a corpse in the backyard gazebo, and the party is definitely over.

The murdered girl was the twenty-year-old daughter of the town's Cadillac dealer, a troubled young woman with a self-destructive streak. The police focus their investigation on her drag-racing boyfriend, local bad boy David Egan, whom McCain agrees to defend. When Egan dies in a freak car accident, the case seems closed. But examining the hot rod shows a cut brake line — and a motive for a killing far more complicated than good girl gone bad.