One of the pleasures of writing in the far-fetched action genre must be the opportunity to take fictional revenge against whatever and whomever you want. Just as long as you include that little disclaimer "...any resemblance to persons living or dead...". MacDonald had a thing about crooked developers, and in this book he gets to literally stop a project dead.

Helena Pearson Trescott, a fondly remembered lovely lady of great class, died leaving a message and a $25,000 check for Travis. He decides to honor her request and look into the mystery of why one of her daughters was acting demented and suicidal. In the process, he discovers crooked real estate dealings and a strange form of medical malfeasance. There's a very clever ploy involving hiding a victim's body, with the collusion of the police. The purpose is to get the murderer bewildered about the missing corpse enough to make revealing mistakes.