Stroud, a crime magazine's crusading editor has to post-pone a vacation with his wife, again, when a glamorous blonde is murdered and he is assigned by his publishing boss Janoth to find the killer. As the investigation proceeds to its conclusion, Stroud must try to disrupt his ordinarily brilliant investigative team as they increasingly build evidence (albeit wrong) that he is the killer. In the book it is based on George Stroud is clearly having an affair with Pauline. Even more shocking, Janoth kills Pauline when she accuses him, with some justification, not of having a series of affairs with his secretaries but of being his associate Hagen’s homosexual lover. Pauline, in turn, is described as bisexual. Remade years later as "No Way Out" starring Kevin Costner.