Mike Shayne investigates the case of a murdered husband and a high-stakes embezzlement plot Mike Shayne finds the dead man in the bedroom. The corpse sports a bowtie, polished black shoes, and a tidy little hole right between his eyes. His name is James Wallace, and no one could've killed him but his wife. Shayne's lover, Lucy Hamilton, begs him to clear the widow's name. He promises do his best, but even for a detective who's famous for solving impossible cases, this one may be out of reach. In Wallace's pockets are a passport and two tickets for South America—neither of which were intended for his wife. Furthermore, $100,000 recently disappeared from the deceased's office, making Wallace look like an adulterer, a conman, and a thief. The truth, Shayne will find, is far less pretty.

A retired Colorado sheriff rides south to the Mexican border to save a naïve young man Ben Thurston is only twenty, and his years in college have taught him little of the real world, yet he believes he's ready for anything. His whole life, he's heard stories about the ranching empire of Jim Rollins, his father's friend who made a fortune near the Mexican border. When Jim dies, Ben gets a letter from his daughter, a young beauty named Katie, pleading for help. With dreams of love and glory dancing in his head, Ben heads south from Powder Valley. Pat Stevens, the Valley's former sheriff, knows Ben is riding into a hornet's nest—the Big Bend of the Rio Grande is the most lawless place in the country, and it will take a fast gun to bring order to it. Luckily for Ben and Katie, Pat and his friends Sam and Ezra are the fastest in the West.