[1] It was a sequel to the author's 1940 debut novel The So Blue Marble, with the setting shifted from New York City to the West Coast.

[2] Hollywood art director Griselda Satterlee has recently remarried her ex-husband journalist Con, and the two are on their second honeymoon.

On a visit to the nearby Bamboo Bar, Con abandons her and picks up an attractive blonde woman and they depart into the night.

Suspicion inevitably falls on Con, but Grisela comes to realize that her husband may have returned to work for the secret intelligence agency Department X.

A variety of other figures crop up including a Hollywood film director, a river journalist of Con's and the sinister Major Pembrooke, apparently a spy as well as a potential murderer.