Publisher's Synopsis
A note from bartender Brian McNulty, Raymond Ambler's friend, confidant, and sometimes adviser, sets the librarian sleuth off on a murder investigation, one that he pursues reluctantly until a second murder upends the world as he knows it. The second victim is a lady friend of McNulty's - and the prime suspect is McNulty himself. As Ambler pursues his investigation, he discovers that the murdered woman had a double life. Her intermittent visits to the city - a whirlwind of reckless drinking and illicit liaisons with men she met in the cocktail lounges - had their counterpart in suburban Fairfield County Connecticut where, as Dr. Sandra Dean, she practiced dermatology and lived in a gated community with a doting husband and a young daughter.
