At the same time, Jimmy is fighting a well-organized right-winger's plan to ban "offensive" fiction from the Chicago public schools. When someone takes a shot at Jimmy from a moving auto in the wee hours of the morning -- a shot that slays his political ally and friend Mabel Halstead -- is it an old enemy or a new one? Jimmy's search for Mabel's killer, in the midst of the rough-and-tumble of a Windy City political campaign, yields some surprising results.