Jack Dwyer comes to the aid of his former love, Jane Branigan, after she is found in a state of shock holding a recently fired gun near the body of her current lover, advertising executive Stephen Elliot

At ten o’clock “straight up”, just as the Channel 3 newscast begins, TV anchorman David Curtis clears his throat, looks into the camera, smiles—then falls face-first across his desk, murdered. Cyanide. The likely suspect is a teenage prowler who, earlier that evening, narrowly escaped the arms of part-time security guard (also ex-cop, sometime-actor) Jack Dwyer. What was the boy after? And, as far as the case is concerned, why does Dwyer sense that the news team is hiding more than they are reporting? Who really engineered the death of the anchorman? Was it Kelly Ford, Channel 3’s aging, less-than-beloved news consultant? Or maybe her boss, Robert Fitzgerald, owner of a station whose ratings have declined almost to the point of bankruptcy? What about Mike Perry, pro-football player turned sports announcer, whose sturdy good looks help him hide a secret the victim knew all too well. Where does grizzly old Dev Roberts, Curtis’s co-anchor, fit in? Or Bill Hanratty, the singing weatherman? Dwyer knows there’s a terrible secret haunting the news team. What is it? And what will all this mean to the ratings?

Jack Dwyer, ex-cop turned amateur actor, is delighted when his agent lands him a role in a local production of Long Day's Journey into Night. The real drama starts, however, when Michael Reeves - the play's angry, bullying director - is found murdered, and Dwyer's friend Stephen Wade, a sweet has-been of an actor, is charged with the crime. Dwyer knows that Wade has been set up. But who did it? And why? Was it David Ashton, an apparent fortune-seeker and heir to the Bridges Theater by marriage; or Richard Keech, the handsome, pushy young actor who shared the woman whom the dead man loved? Or could it have been Anne Stewart - the aging actress who carries a secret as dark as that of the character she plays? And what of Lenora Bridges, the matriarch of the theatrical family, who never comes out of her room in the building high above the stage? Sure, all the world's a stage, but for Dwyer, it's not that simple, because a real man's life is on the line. In order to save him, Dwyer's going to have to discover what's really going on behind the scenes at the most bizarre, mysterious, complex theater company west of Times Square.

Jack Dwyer joins the beautiful Karen Lane in a voyage back to their high school days to resolve a mystery that has been plaguing her for years