The maestro steps to the podium, a plane flies overhead, the stage lights go down, and when they come up moments later the conductor has been shot--murdered by unknown gunmen in front of twenty thousand witnesses on the stage of the Hollywood Bowl. And before the event, detective Ben Jardinn had been approached by two of the prime suspects, to prove their innocence. But, can he solve the murder when there is no one he can trust, not even the members of his own agency? In Death in a Bowl, Raoul Whitfield, drinking companion of Dashiell Hammett and fellow Black Mask author, gives us a story of greed and betrayal set against the backdrop of Hollywood in the late twenties.