Mr. Van Atta makes intemperate demands upon your intelligence and his story defies recapitulation. It's a kind of businessman's blueplate Special about a company which is being mismanaged, the conspiracy to manipulate its stock by some former inmates of a midwestern orphanage, and the attempt of an investigator of a consultant firm to find two missing people. One of them a Skid Row alcoholic kills five victims before he disposes of the reader.