Bodies pile up when a Tinsel Town gumshoe unravels a blackmail scheme that links a socialite to the leader of an outlaw motorcycle gang ... herself.  

SYNOPSIS:

Someone’s slashing people with a can opener but that’s not Phyllis Harlow’s problem –

The private eye faces an uphill battle. She’s three years sober and drowning in background checks, wayward husbands, and missing pets – and not enough of it. How she’s going to pay next months rent is the $64,000 question.

To the rescue: socialite, Emma Caldwell – recently resurfaced after an unexplained absence – hires Harlow to thwart a blackmail threat from “Malo” Maulalo, the leader of an outlaw motorcycle gang. A gang Emma was once a part of.

Harlow bumps heads with her ex, Lt. Delgado, the badge from the LAPD, at the scene of a rubout in Tinseltown. It’s the fourth stiff to turn up in a week, all slashed with a sharpened church key, and Harlow thinks there’s a connection to Malo. But when Delgado spots Harlow’s bloody business card clenched in the victims hardened fist he makes her a prime suspect.

Harlow grills former members of Malo’s old gang with every lead drawing her closer to the elusive cycle thug. But as each stoolie starts to sing they’re mysteriously rubbed out.

Harlow zeros in on Malo’s whereabouts and when she goes in for the pinch Malo surprises her by turning up dead with a bloody church key at his side. It seems that some other diabolical scum bag is playing a cruel joke on Harlow and now she has to find out who it is before Delgado nails her and locks her in the cooler.

But the ante is raised when Harlow finds Delgado’s body, iced with a shiv and a note from the blackmailer saying, “Come and get me.” He’s kidnapped Emma and now he wants a face-to-face with Harlow.

Painted into a corner, the challenged shamus needs to get the bad guy, rescue the girl and save the day.

It’s a tough time to be on the wagon…