A heat wave has settled over The City (it's New York, but McBain never identifies it as such), bringing tempers to the flashpoint. An alarm clock wakes a cop for his midnight shift; when he descends into the soupy night, a shot fells him. The entire precinct mobilizes immediately - one of their own has been killed.

We encounter the familiar names of the Precinct's detectives (or some of them), most notably Steve Carella (here, Carelli), played by a young Robert Loggia; he's the bright cop engaged - not yet married - to the beautiful deaf-mute Teddy (Ellen Parker). His partner Maguire (Gerald O'Loughlin) has already tied the knot, but when he tries to keep cool in his undershorts to the whirr of a feeble fan, his wife (Shirley Ballard) brushes him off (`You're wet - oozing wet,' she sniffs).

When a second cop is gunned down in cold blood, attention turns to members of one of the gangs of young punks that were a fixture of post-war New York, but it's a dead end. Next, it's Maguire's turn to meet his very own dead end. Loggia, made indiscreet by too many `splashes' of Scotch to slake his thirst, tells his theories to a callow newspaper reporter and inadvertently puts Teddy in jeopardy....