Tatiana 'Tash' Perkins, a brilliant young journalist, is sent by her paper to interview the State Governor's wife, and a strange interview it the woman behaves like a zombie, and when they are alone together she slips a letter to Tash and asks her to post it. But before Tash can do so, her handbag is snatched and the letter with it.Yet the governor charms her, and soon she is accepting a job as his campaign speech-writer. But Tash is soon drawn into a frightening sequence of events, ranging from the killing of a canary to murder by arson, and an assassination at a political rally.
Helen McCloy, born as Helen Worrell Clarkson McCloy (she also published as Helen Clarkson), was an American mystery writer, whose series character Dr. Basil Willing debuted in Dance of Death (1938). Willing believes that "every criminal leaves psychic fingerprints, and he can't wear gloves to hide them." He appeared in 13 of McCloy's novels and in several of her short stories. McCloy often used the theme of doppelganger, but in the end of the story she showed a psychological or realistic explanation for the seemingly supernatural events.