A new kind of mystery novel—featuring comic art by Terry Beatty, co-creator of the Ms. Tree series and frequent artist for the Batman comic books.

Manhattan, 1948. Wonder Guy, soaring superhero, represents all that is good about postwar America. But underpaid cartoonists Harry Spiegel and Moe Shulman feel bad about publisher Donny Harrison making a killing from their creation. Then, celebrating his birthday dressed in Wonder Guy's signature caped costume, Donny suddenly collapses onto a cake knife—and discovers the super suit does not grant him the hero's invulnerability.

Glamorous Maggie Starr is America's most famous ex-striptease artist. in a way the diva is still "stripping"—running her late husband's newspaper syndicate, distributing the Wonder Guy comic strip. Stepson Jack Starr, her V.P. and chief troubleshooter, doesn't need X-ray vision to see Donny's "accident" is murder. Together they must find a killer among cartoonists, wives, mistresses, and minions of a different sort of "syndicate"—suspects with motives that are anything but superheroic.

Mystery*File: "[Collins vividly evokes] the colorful world of the comics and their creators."

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