When barrister Antony Maitland and his wife Jenny set off on an eagerly anticipated holiday in the United States, the commission which a solicitor friend asked him to undertake seemed no more than an excuse for a pleasant detour. He was to visit the aged sole heir of an estate worth half a million and get him to claim it within the stipulated six months. Maitland visits the old man, only to find him dying. But he has a long-lost daughter who can claim if she can be found in time. The quest for her takes Antony and Jenny and their American friends to California - and they are not alone in their search. The executors of the will have come over from England and are also anxious to find her, but they are less disinterested: if she does not claim, they inherit. Maitland's anxiety mounts. there have been two suspiciously convenient deaths already. Is there about to be a third?