Plot Summary:When Jessica hears on TV that director-producer Jerry Lydecker is turning the movie after her respectable mystery book The Corps Danced At Midnight into cheap slash junk with sex and gore, she flies to Hollywood to protest, but studio boss Marty Strindberg, who sends her a junior lawyer, and Lydecker have a contract clause she signed waving her rights to object. When Jessica intends to apologize to Lydecker, she finds him killed on he set, and becomes the only obvious suspect. Fortunately LAPD Detective Mack Brody, an amateur mystery writer himself, has enough faith in Jessica to encourage her snooping and believe she saw evidence which disappeared during the minute she talked to the security guard. Lydecker's ruthless behavior and romantic affair with the unexperienced female co-star provide several possible motives...