Archer challenges his readers to find "twelve red herrings", one in each story.

The book reached #3 in the Canadian best-sellers (fiction) list.

"[2] For the story "One Man's Meat..." the reader is offered the choice of four different endings: "Rare", "Burnt", "Overdone" and "À Point".

Sweeney from Magill Book Reviews comments on this: "Each of the conclusions is quite plausible, although the average reader may find one far more convincing that the others--a circumstance which the author no doubt anticipated with a certain degree of relish.

In the preface the author notes that the stories indicated with an asterisk are "based on known incidents (some of them embellished with considerable licence)."