Holly Winter has a contract to write the text for a book of photographs commemorating the legendary Morris and Essex Dog Shows, canine extravaganzas produced by the fabulously wealthy and famously dog-obsessed Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge in the years leading up to World War II. Needless to say, Holly is delighted with the assignment, and immediately sets out to interview one of the few remaining people who actual attended one of the shows - B. Robert Motherway, a Princeton classmate of the Dodges' late son. It only takes one vist for Holly to realize that there is something strange going on the Motherway household: a wife dying painfully in an upstairs bedroom, a daughter-in-law acting as a maid, a sullen son playing the role of kennel man, and - most distressing of all - a German shepherd that growls menacingly. Soon Holly begins to receive mysterious anonymous packages in the mail: a leaflet describing a popular dog medicine, cryptic letters written in German, a couple of old photographs. Who could be sending them, and what do they mean? When Motherway's disagreeable son is found garroted in Mount Auburn Cemetery, the circumstances convince Holly that she must find the answers before she herself becomes the next victim.