Morocco Jones figured this assignment would be a breeze. After all, sending a guy who specialized in busting up crime syndicates and international spy rings to Los Angeles to track down some two-bit blackmailer seemed like using a cannon to kill a mosquito. To Morocco, it seemed like a good excuse for a nice little Hollywood vacation—catch a bit of sun, bed a few starlets, and relax poolside with a large snifter of brandy.

But Morocco couldn't have been more wrong! Because this was no two-bit blackmail scheme. The half a billion-dollar payoff—for whoever was behind the plot—was money worth killing for. From the moment Morocco Jones hit fabulous movieland, things began to explode in some very strange and terrifying directions.

First, there was the reception committee of musclemen who waylaid Morocco in the dark right outside his client's fancy Spanish villa. Next was the ex-hood who had become high-priest of a powerful and sinister religious cult that didn't draw the line even at murder when it came to keeping its secrets secret. Then, there was the scandal sheet that raked in the do-re-mi from the studios—for the truly scandalous stories it didn't print about Screenland's kings and queens. Add in a crooked cop named Doheny who didn't like Morocco's lip, and the unsolved double murder of a famous screen beauty and her husband that tied into it all somehow. Nor could Morocco overlook the incendiary blond starlet in the oh-so revealing dress who seemed to have slept with half his suspects and was always one step ahead of him, wherever he went.

There were a lot of angles to figure, even for an operative like Morocco Jones—and his only hope of solving it was a lush out cold from a 10-day bender and a raw cub reporter who looked more destined to end up being written about in the Obits than than getting his by-line on the story of the year—when and if it broke. This was a case with the distinct odor of an organized blackmail ring with syndicate tie-ups.