The Continental op, an operative in a detective agency, is summoned to the mining town of Personville, customarily referred to as Poisonville and corrupt from top to bottom The op has been summoned by town boss Elihu Wilson to pin the murder of his son on a rival gang, but when the op finds that the killing was one of passion, he takes his fee and uses it to set one group of crooks against another, to 'open up Poisonville from Adam's apple to ankle'