A Hollywood screenwriter has been strangled with movie film. He had just finished naming names to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Homicide, Captain Al Parker wants a quick politically satisfying collar to feed the press. But Homicide Lieutenant Frank Vance, a cynical veteran of Iwo Jima, tries to look through the political smokescreen. When additional victims are killed the same way, Vance becomes locked in a power struggle between truth and the “red scare” of a rising autocracy. He must untangle a web of studio blackmail, corrupt media manipulation, and a shadowy enforcer circle operating out of an American Legion Post to find the killer.
