A drowned man. A sinister circus. And murder, murder, murder. Nod Blake, the wise-cracking private eye, is back. He's an aging throwback to a bygone era of detecting on the mean streets; a dinosaur of a private eye who never got the memo that he was extinct. And thanks to his over-eager secretary, he's been dumped in the midst of murder most foul. From beyond the grave, victims are begging Blake to solve their murders. In the real world, he's flummoxed by vandals, threats to his life, wildly raucous suspects and a homicide detective happy to pin killings on him.