Spenser, who served as an infantryman in the 1st Infantry Division during the Korean War[1] and as a former State trooper, is hired by Bradford W. Forbes, the president of an unnamed university (heavily implied to be Northeastern, the university at which Parker himself taught at the time) to recover a stolen illuminated manuscript, a medieval book of great historical and literary importance.

It's being held for ransom by an unknown perpetrator who demands $100,000 be donated to a free school for the manuscript's return.

It has no inherent monetary value since it cannot be fenced, and the university — a poor, inner-city school (much as Northeastern was at the time) — cannot afford the ransom.

Spenser's investigation leads him to Lowell Hayden, an English professor at the university who is reputedly an anonymous member of SCACE.

Spenser leaves the English Department offices and is met by campus security: he has been summarily 'fired' from his job of looking for the manuscript.

Undeterred by this series of events, Spenser continues his investigation to prove Terry's innocence in the murder of Powell and tie it to the theft of the manuscript.

Captain Yates has taken over the police investigation and is determined to railroad Terry Orchard into prison for Powell's death.

Hayden believed the heroin would allow people to expand their minds leading to an "open society;" Powell dealt it for the sake of the money to be made from it.

Broz had Hayden return it in the hopes that Spenser would drop the case before discovering the heroin distribution scheme.

Spenser would meet Susan Silverman for the first time in God Save the Child, this book's immediate sequel.