"It was the kind of night when you caught yourself holding your breath for no reason at all." So says private eye Harry Monday as he investigates three murders at the Peaceful Pines Sanitarium. Indeed, the murders have been stacking up, so much that the police are getting tired of coming out and have asked for the details to be phoned in. Who killed an old sea captain, a ventriloquist and a tramp? What did these three have in common? The suspects are many: the sultry soon-to-be-heiress, the lawyer, the doctor, the actor, the socialite, the Indian, the Swedish gardener, the disgruntled nurse. Add in a power outage on a stormy night . . . . As the murders continue, the questions mount, and the suspects dwindle. Who is the killer . . . and who will be next?