It is the twenty-sixth installment of the Matt Helm series, and saw the return of the main character after a three-year hiatus.

Matt Helm (code name: Eric) is assigned to kill a drug lord after the villain orders the murder of a journalist.

The story starts in Santa Fe where Matt is trying to live a normal life with Jo Beckman from the previous novel, The Frighteners.

At the beginning of the story, Jo has left Matt because he has taken up shooting as a hobby.

One of the characters from a previous novel, The Infiltrators, Madeleine Ellershaw, comes to visit Matt with a complaint that he's having her followed.