Cain locks horns with mob chief George Vincent and Vincent sets out to have him killed.
Gang boss George Vincent has put out a contract on the life of former mob attorney Nick Cain. When Cain's fiancée is killed in the attempted hit, Cain sets out to prove that Vincent was responsible for the murder and bring him to justice.
There's an accident at bootlegger Ed Hoagley's distillery, and Hoagley has the victim made to look like a hit-and-run case. The ruse works—until Cain identifies the man as one of Hoagley's boys.
Cain hopes to break mobster Lenny Bircher's stranglehold on a town's wholesale food marketers and looks for a witness who will testify against him, but everyone is too afraid. His best hope is with the daughter of a wholesaler who has fallen for the supervisor who is under Bircher's control.
Cain's target is mobster Frank Andreotis, a man he was once close to. To bring him down, he hopes to convince a girl whom Andreotis forced into drugs and prostitution to testify against him.
Cain arrives in a small but wide-open town, intent upon smashing the power of local vice baron, Herman Coombs. He gets nowhere fast with the police force--all handpicked by Coombs.
Cain finds it hard to believe that narcotics boss Lou Strode has really guit, even though Strode has a good reason--his son died as a result of dope addiction. Cain looks for evidence on which to get him indicted.
Cain searches for a waterfront racketeer.
An examination of syndicate kingpin Frank Neehan's operation turns up the name Phillip Hallson. Cain wonders if this is the Phillip Hallson who is a federal judge--until Neehan's case is suddenly transferred to Hallson's court.
Karl Bigger, the head of a costume jewelry company, decides to join with mob hoodlums in a scheme to smuggle gold into Mexico. Cain knows this but decides to go after bigger fish than Bigger.
After his deputies arrest a man who was planning to set up shop for the mob in his town, a small-town sheriff decides to make a deal with the mob's higher-ups to make more money for himself.
Dress manufacturer Louis Speckter believes gangster Alexander Marish has let him use his own trucks for years out of friendship. But now, the pressure is on Marish to get everyone in line, and Speckter and his son are the last holdouts. When the son is killed for resisting Marish, the elder Speckter still can't believe Marish had anything to do with it.
Zales Yoder and his son Kurt disagree over the extent to which they should allow Benjamin Riker to further control their business so that he can use it for smuggling purposes, even after Riker resorts to threats to get Yoder's customers to take their business elsewhere.
Cain tries to persuade gentle-natured Wilbur Morton that numbers racket boss Jack Garsell is not the "nice man" Morton believes him to be, and that he should testify against him.
Cain is targeting pornography peddler Milton Bonner, but he finds he must also fight Bonner's public relations man Philip Colerane, who orders his staff to create as negative an image of Cain as possible.
While on vacation in a small town, Cain is surprised to learn that William Norman, a mobster he has been trying to nail, has been arrested for beating up the father of his girlfriend. So it surprises the local district attorney when Cain, an old friend, decides to defend Norman against this charge.
A neo-Nazi group is stirring up fear and hatred in a small town. But Cain believes the leader of the group is actually being controlled by someone higher up for self-serving reasons.
Cain decides to go ahead with prosecuting mobster Earl Klegg for conspiracy in the murder of a witness against him, even though Klegg was in prison at the time and the case is regarded by other attorneys as not being strong enough.
Jay Adams has been recruited by reformer Sam Palmer to run against Tully Johnson, the powerful and crooked district attorney of a small town. But Palmer is unaware that Adams is actually meeting with Johnson himself.
Gambling czar Big Ed Pavanne's dying wish is to see his son Rick, who is at college in the Midwest.
Cain is in Corsica to make a recommendation as to whether he thinks exiled gangster Mike Colonni has forsaken his old ways and should be permitted to come to America again. The recent "accidental" death of a young man working for him makes him skeptical.
Cain sets his sights on the accountant for a mob boss, a seemingly laid-back but vicious thug who "exiled" a singer to Alaska after his nephew fell in love with her.
Cain is bothered by the fact that a reporter friend of his can't find the courage to break with the mobster who runs his town and even has moles in the police department.