The game takes place in Cabeza Plana, a quiet and fictional (the name is Spanish for "Flathead", from Zork mythology) suburb of Los Angeles, California in February 1938.

The player's character is a detective assigned one evening to check out the wealthy man's claims: is Linder seriously in danger or just another rich eccentric?

For authenticity, he obtained a 1930s Sears catalog and researched contemporary slang; the radio plays the programs that aired on the day the game occurs in.

[5] BYTE agreed on the game's difficulty, and stated that author Stu Galley "apparently read enough of the [hard-boiled mystery] genre to emulate the style without mocking it", with "quick but thorough and evocative" descriptions.

The magazine praised the feelies, and concluded that "Galley and the Infocom staff have succeeded in designing what Sherlock Holmes would call a 'three-pipe problem.