We'd like you to meet Glenn Bowman, one of the toughest-and smartest- private eyes in New York.
This time he's got himself involved in trying to keep alive the current heart-throb of Broadway-Pierre Dupray.
Dupray is so certain that he's going to be bumped off between cocktail time and the time he boards the night plane for Hollywood that he is paying Bowman 2,000 dollars to keep him breathing.
First published in 1954, this is a tough, rough story with the inimitable Bowman on top of his form in one of the grimmest assignments of his career.