When Jennifer Singleton, whose magical laugh and phenomenal beauty had made her the darling of the American stage, is found murdered on a Sunday afternoon and her young gardener is caught running away from her house, it looks like a simple case of robbery-homicide. But Lieutenant Nathan Shapiro of the New York Police Department, with a gentle nudge from his wife, Rose, begins to wonder if things really are as simple as they appear. Shapiro receives an unexpected assist from a retired Army general, whose sharpness of eye is surpassed only by his sharpness of tongue. When a couple of Jennifer's exhusbands turn up, the scene becomes more confused. Jennifer's laughter had kept her audiences entranced, but now someone had decided that she should die laughing.