He was a quiet novelist, a man who wanted to die, but not by his own hand. To make it legal, he wanted Alabama to do it for him, using "Yellow Mama," the chair up at Atmore. Then his death would be on their hands, not his, and his wife would receive the insurance money without a hitch. But he needed help. He had to convince Harvey Masterson, his best friend, to disappear for a while, and then convince the police that he'd killed him.

But sometimes even the best-laid plans failed, particularly when a vicious killer like Jake Chiles was in town. He came to set some fires and to do some killing to support an elaborate real estate scam that was centered on the Eastern Shore of Mobile. Joe Dudley was intimately involved in the scam and so was Pat, Harvey's wife, Joe's new lover. And that definitely presented a delicate complication for David Maloney and his plans, especially after Pat and Joe found out about his "simulated murder" scheme, and decided to disappear Harvey for real.