Tom McElrath, gone from the role of Simon Fraser's assistant of 12 years earlier, shattered by the loss of his wife and expected daughter in childbirth, returns to Spancourt and his original job with Fraser in the hope he can "pick up the pieces." He is welcomed back and is almost immediately involved in the case of the murder of several lawyers. "A page out of Shakespeare," he says, "wherein Dick advises Cade (who would be king) "Let's first kill all the lawyers." Someone is doing just that, so Tom is once again deeply involved in conducting interviews of the suspects and doing the leg work, since Simon Fraser in deference to his own old age refuses to leave the comforts of his study. Recovering somewhat and making his notes which he hopes to turn into another book, Tom calls his latest work "A Return to Murder."

Simon Fraser has returned from the dead. This is no surprise to his fortune telling friend Millicent Zacharias who thought his sudden heart attach and subsequent cremation a bit too fast and "hokey" to be believed. Besides, her Tarot deck never showed the old man's name along with the Death card. Mrs. Z's cards never lie.

Someone has been about the business of elimination the original member's of the Detective Club. Simon's assistant Tom McElrath and his wife had a near miss by dropping a flight east and stopping over at Denver. The plane they were supposed to be on was blown up in the air. Ginnie Smith, her husband, and tiny son have been killed and their house burnt to the ground.

Simon, returned from a government journey to Iraq will not discuss why he disappeared and what he did. He is now accompanied by a cold-eyed young man named Archer Shane whose task it is to keep him alive and who takes his work seriously.

The remaining members of the Detective Club: Millicent Zacharias, Prentice Dodd and Lieutenant Robert Campbell are not inclined to take the precautions Simon or Archer think they should.

Brenton College may be a highly reputed private school of music and the arts, but there are deadly things associated with its director and staff. Are some of them victims or villains? In any event two students have been killed near the Demon Cave once owned by the head of Brenton College and now in Simon's possession.

Fortunately, Tom McElrath's young stepbrother has appeared on the scene to take his place as Simon's assistant. His job will be to learn how to protect himself and Simon, attend and spy at the Brenton College, and stay alive. With two students murdered near the Demon's Cave, this is a risky business indeed. With the wily Mildred Brenton guarding her school, Simon may have met his match.

As usual, Lieutenant Robert Campbell of the Ben Nevis Homicide Department has more assistance than he wants from Simon, Mrs. Zacharias, and now young Alex McElrath.

Imps are born and not made. Being an imp these days is a far more difficult thing than in the time prior to WWII. Those earlier pre-war days are reported in this book. Today's imps require medical advise, appropriate dampening pills, and an entirely different form of discipline, perhaps even psychiatric treatment. Nothing seems so unwanted in modern times as a full-fledged imp of any age. Being an imp in a small western railroad town (Sparks, Nevada) in the twenties and thirties of the previous century offered a wide range of puckish opportunities and freedoms. Somehow it was expected that the young were to be adventurous and create various minor problems which the adult world of the time seemed able to take in stride. The one thing we didn't do, in my day, was report on our 'adventures' to our parents. It was our sincere belief that the less they knew about the risks we took, the more serene their existence, and also ours. Of course, with the small-town gossip network operating at full-bore, our parents knew much more than we thought they did. The inherent blessing was that, in most cases, they shrugged their shoulders, credited our activities to youth and only interfered when serious injury or mayhem might result. We owe them a great debt - - allowing us to learn from our own experiences.