Clio Rees is a doctor who has given up her practice to write murder myster­ies. It never occurred to her that she might become the central figure in one—a very real one that required more imagination to figure out than anything she had concocted for her fictional stories. 

She is called by the police and asked to identify the body of a young man who turns out to be one of her closest friends. Suicide, say the po­lice. Murder, says Clio Rees. 

She decides to investigate and her trail leads to a man she had known rather well in medical school—a man who is now one of the gods of the medical establishment and who is on the threshold of achieving what has heretofore been impossible—the design of an artificial implantable kidney. What was his connection with the dead man? As the answers begin to take ominous shape she discovers that there will be another victim: Clio Rees.