An academic looking for money finds a seductive woman—and trouble—in this suspenseful tale by the Edgar Award–winning crime writer.

Professor Lloyd Palmer loves a good biography. His fantasy is to start an institute to teach young scholars the biographical arts, and it will take old money to make his dreams come true. In the Washington area, the oldest money is found not in the District, but in Delaware, a land of wealth so astonishing that even the Du Ponts are considered nouveau riche. But when Professor Palmer goes to Wilmington, he comes away not with old money, but young trouble by the name of Hortense Garrett. She is his benefactor's wife, a twenty-something beauty trapped in an unhappy marriage, whose good looks conceal the most cunning mind on this side of the Potomac. She needs a ride to Washington, and Lloyd offers to give her a lift. They've barely left Delaware before he falls for her. By the time the pair hits the beltway, the ending of his biography will be in her hands.

Praise for James M. Cain's fiction

"Lean, racing . . . stripped of inessentials." —The New York Times

"Nobody has quite pulled it off the way Cain does . . . not even Raymond Chandler." —Tom Wolfe