1948 Los Angeles. The House Un-American Activities Committee in Washington, D.C. is investigating members of the Communist party and their activities taking root throughout the United States.
Matthew Thornton P.I. is hired by a friend of Humphrey Bogart to recover jewels given to a mobster's mistress and Ernest Hemingway threatened while overseeing the filming of his latest movie.
Thornton uncovers a connection to several murdered women and a communist plot to overthrow the Hollywood film industry with funds generated from a counterfeit currency scheme, laundering the money through Chinatown's illegal gambling, dope and prostitution activities.
The conspirators: Black Jade, a top level female communist from China and now owner of a waterfront nightclub, Shanghai Ruby's, Carson McCullen, a manufacturing executive with a secret past and unwitting celebrity connections and the Communist “Gang of Eight” the writers, producers and directors at Majestic Movie Studios.
Thornton's assisted by a Rhonda Fleming look-a-like moonlighting at the Florentine Gardens burlesque club, an aging actor with a closet full of secrets and a federal vendetta, a gutter-story newspaper reporter, a black jazz musician with a penchant for lost blondes and a homicide police detective, risking his retirement plans.
From Los Angeles to Catalina Island, Thornton and his partners descend into the steamy world of sex, violence, kidnapping, car bombings and murder. Frequenting tattoo parlors, brothels, jazz joints, strip clubs, seedy hotels and rundown apartments, blazing waterfront warehouses and back alley slums, they connect the pieces and dispense justice…the hard way.
