 Beula Poole, the publisher of an independent political and economics journal, has been shot dead in her offices days before.Although there is no apparent connection between the crimes, Wolfe is skeptical that two independent publishers would be murdered within weeks of each other without any link.His investigations reveal that the magazines were in fact the front for a sophisticated blackmail operation which targeted its victims using the threat of slander to compel them to purchase subscriptions for a year.