Noel Reynolds, who owns and operates his own publishing firm, learns in an unsettling way that someone wants him dead: he receives a funeral wreath, and someone has placed his death notice in the obituary section of the newspaper. He hires Stuart to investigate. Beyond checking out what ends up being the dead end of the person behind the obituary, Stuart begins to believe the person trying to scare or kill Noel is Colonel José Vargas, as Noel has long planned to publish the story of Juan Ricardo Sebastian written by his surviving wife, Lucia Sebastian, the male Sebastian who was killed by the Central American political regime of which Vargas is a part. Noel has been in negotiation with Vargas who wants to buy the manuscript so that it doesn't get published, he seemingly willing to go to other means if the manuscript isn't for sale. Stuart also learns that selling the manuscript to Vargas would be the last straw for Noel's wife and the publishing house's editor-in-chief, Lisa Reynolds, who, tired of the trash that they generally publish and which doesn't sell, believes this book has some significance. Associated, the other earlier straws for Lisa have been Noel's penchant for the race track, and his penchant for choosing female authors for their shapely figures and succumbing to his advances, they married or not, rather than their writing ability, which is usually non-existent. As such, Stuart begins to have a secondary goal in this investigation: to protect the manuscript to ensure that Lisa can get it published.
—Huggo