Eight years after the famous movie actress, Christine Clay, thought she was rid of him, her husband shows up from nowhere. He’s furious that she left him, outraged over her “silly Reno divorce” and indignant that she is now spending her time with “boys.” That’s his view of things, but she’ll never get the chance to give her own side. The quarrel is barely over before her body washes up on the beach near her home. She didn’t drown. She was strangled with the belt of a raincoat. The person who finds her is the “boy” she’s supposedly seeing, Robert Tisdall, a young screenwriter, down on his luck. He runs to get help, and two young women see him. It looks as if he is escaping the scene of a crime. Soon, Tisdall is arrested for murder. But before the trial begins, he escapes, determined to find the real killer. Along the way he finds an unexpected ally in Erica Burgoyne, the police constable’s daughter.

Crime | Thriller