Lew Archer's search for a missing bride takes him to a college campus where her confidante is now murdered, and back to a past which concealed other half-remembered and best forgotten incidents: her mother's death at her father's hands? a semi-connected inquiry into who put the chill on one Luke Deloney in still another city; and finally a complex emotional masquerade.... Like an oilslick on a fast travelled throughway, this is shiny, treacherous stuff.