This one was for keeps. It started the night private eye Ed Rivers went to the rescue of a damsel in distress and almost ended up at the bottom of Tampa Bay. Ed knew who was lurking behind him. His name was Russ Leppert. Russ liked to kill people. Not for any real reason - just because he liked it. Then there was the man who had once been the business of hustling pornographic stag movies. He wanted to get back into the racket again, in a big way. And, of course, the middle-aged Dixieland musician named Straight Stuff Delaney. Was Straight Stuff blowing for kicks - or merely furnishing the fanfares for other murders to come?

My name is Ed Rivers. I live in Tampa, Florida, where I work as a private cop. I’m six feet tall, weigh in at about one ninety, and am forty years old. When I look in the mirror I see a heavy, bearish face, dark-tanned and creased, the thick lids giving the brown eyes a lazy look. Women either get a charge from that face or want to run from it. Men fear it or trust it to the hilt. It isn’t a face that ever meets a neutral reaction. I’m not always happy about that, but it’s my face and I have to do the best I can with it.