Jacob Mandra had a million-dollar apartment on the fringe of Chinatown ... and a reputation. Early one morning they found him dead. And a few hours later Terry Clane found himself in the District Attorney's office - by request. The District Attorney began asking strange questions that Terry Clane didn't care to answer, and when Terry finally sailed out of the D.A.'s office he realised that he and some of his friends were involved in the Mandra murder ... up to their necks.

Chinatown... To baffle the lie-detector clamped on his arm, Terry Clane used the technique of intense concentration that he had learnt in the Orient. But the sight of a little Chinese figure - an old man riding backwards on a mule - sent the lie-detector needle leaping: for he had given it once to Cynthia, his former fiancée and a close friend of a man convicted of murder who had escaped. 'Either there is something which I have not accurately diagnosed,' said the police examiner, 'or else... you murdered Horace Farnsworth.' That was just the start of a long and spine-chilling game of hide-and-seek played through San Francisco's Chinatown.