Spenser is approached by Ashton Prince, an art professor who wants him to help recover a stolen painting. The thieves will return the painting in exchange for a ransom, and so the professor wants Spenser along in case things turn nasty. The exchange goes seemingly without a hitch, but as Prince emerges carrying a rectangular object wrapped in brown paper and heads for the private detective's car, the package explodes and makes a dreadful mess of the hapless prof.

Spenser isn't going to let anyone get away with killing one of his clients, but first he's got to figure out who did it and why. Turns out that Professor Prince was giving extra tuition to his pretty young female students - and not just of the academic kind. But why go to such elaborate lengths to murder him? And is the painting still out there?

Soon Spenser will find that powerful men have their own reasons to suppress the answers to such questions - and they will think nothing of silencing a prying detective.