Detective Elijah Baley of Earth is training with his son and others to overcome their socially ingrained agoraphobia when he is told that the Spacer world of Aurora has requested him to investigate a crime: the destruction of the mind of R. Jander Panell, a humaniform robot identical to R. Daneel Olivaw, with a mental block.

En route to Aurora, Baley again is partnered with R. Daneel Olivaw, and introduced to R. Giskard Reventlov, a robot of an earlier model.

Gremionis denies involvement in the murder, and says he has reported Baley to the Chairman (the executive of the Auroran Government) for slander; but realizes, upon questioning, that Vasilia arranged his infatuation with Gladia.

As Baley states, without Fastolfe's cooperation, the only way to obtain knowledge about humaniform robots is to reverse engineer Daneel by thorough questioning, which would have allowed Amadiro to learn the details of his workings.

Daneel was part of Fastolfe's establishment, and thus well guarded, but Jander was at the house of the much less skilled Gladia, thus questioning him for reverse engineering purposes was much easier.

Using knowledge derived from Han Fastolfe's mind, Giskard shut down Jander, to thwart Amadiro's attempt to build humaniform robots.

Dave Langford reviewed The Robots of Dawn for White Dwarf #53, and stated that "It's a cerebral book, with the intellectual pattern of the crime unravelling bit by bit in a skilled display of pacing and plotting, while the high point of physical excitement merely consists of Baley getting caught out in the rain (a quite effective scene, thanks to his agoraphobia).