Jessica is working a new novel that is based on actual murder case that happened years before. When the private investigator she hired to look into the case is murdered in his office, she and the investigator's partner, tough guy Harry McGraw, reluctantly team up to see which of his cases lead to his death.

Jessica meets up with a poet friend in San Francisco for a special literary awards banquet. While at the party the poet gets into a scuffle with an author who claims to have wrote the "definitive" novel about the Vietnam War. When the author is later found in his room and his manuscript missing, the poet is the prime suspect. Jessica then sets out to prove to the police that her friend is innocent of the crime.