Mona-Lise Hadley is a wisecracking, pot-smoking, man-loving Manhattan private investigator. In her Manhattan office, sobs and shouts leach through the thin wall she shares with a busy divorce lawyer, confirming her aversion to matrimony. So intense is her distaste for the "bogus institution" that she refuses even the most lucrative straying spouse cases-until one blustery March afternoon. Germain Tailleur bursts into the office and begs M.L. to discover what her husband Stephen is up to. M.L. takes the case. She has to. She's already involved ... M.L. follows Stephen to a mysterious apartment perched high above the Hudson River where she finds him with a cool blonde. Adultery is the least of his problems. The blonde is dead. M.L. tails her suspects on the mean, and not-so-mean, streets of Manhattan, and also pulls her across the country to California, where she finds evidence in similar cases and realizes the killer is the person she should have suspected all along.