Cyrus Skeen, private eye in 1928 San Francisco, is approached by a captivating French countess, Vanessa Favaul, and a brusque retired British army colonel, Burton Heywood, to find the thief who stole a priceless artifact from countess's mother. At the same time, he wonders why a harmless Austrian junk shop owner and connoisseur of the fine arts in China Basin, the city's industrial underbelly, was brutally murdered. Complicating these matters is the mystery of who wrote a hit play and why the author is so publicity shy. Skeen is further intrigued by his new secretary, Dilys Jones, who...

CYRUS SKEEN, noted private detective in San Francisco, has followed an international art fence, ANDRE PETROSSIAN, to a burlesque theater, hoping that the man will lead him to the artworks stolen from a Boston museum. When the theater is raided by the police, Petrossian makes a run for it, but is shot dead by Sergeant ROBERT HOILE, a homicide detective who had made a wager with a colleague that he could find the man responsible for molesting children in a city playground. Together Hoile and Skeen recover the cache of stolen artwork, and learn that Petrossian had planned to sell it to HANDY...