Harry McGraw, the seedy, abrasive, loud, and messy private detective based in Boston, has just opened shop across the hall from criminal attorney Ellie Maginnis, who hires McGraw to look into a publishing partner's death.
E.J.'s roommate, who was employed as a campaign worker, is murdered. Harry suspects a cover-up involving the rich candidate, who supposedly slept with the roommate.
Harry accompanies MacGinnis to the theater which he is not to keen on. The tickets were given to her by someone named Chapman. When she gets the tickets someone is watching her. When Harry steps out, some men grab him and take hi to meet someone who thinks he's Chapman. He asks him where are the tapes. But of course Harry doesn't know what he's talking about. That's when he has Harry drugged but he doesn't say anything. Later someone opens the door so that Harry can escape. Later Maginnis thinks Harry bailed on her. When he take her to the house the girl there acts as if she and Harry hooked up previously. Which puts him in the dog house with Maginnis. Later the Feds show up stating that if McGraw has evidence against the man whose house he went to he should turn it over. But Harry doesn't know what they are talking about. That's when they tell him that the man is being investigated. Harry decides to find this Mr. Chapman to get everybody off his back.
A man who married his wife for her money is accused of killing her. So Maginnis defends him and asks Harry to help which he is reluctant to do because he doesn't like the man. But eventually they discover a few anomalies, like for instance that the woman's step son was not fond of her either. And that the murder weapon that they think was used to kill her might not be the actual murder weapon.
Harry tries to get in a poker game wherein a known poker player whom Harry wants to play with will be in. So he asks Maginnis to help him, so she contacts a restaurateur who will also be at the game to help Harry. He offers to pay Harry's stake saying he wants him to keep an eye on the player because they don't know if he is on the up and up. Later the restaurateur's wife is killed and the suspect is another man who was at the game who left early. The man admits that he and the woman were having an affair but he didn't kill her. Harry thinks the restaurateur had his wife killed and brought Harry to the game to be his alibi. Harry along with the player, who wants to be detective try to prove it.
Harry becomes a babysitter for a bookie's precocious granddaughter, while the man is off getting involved with counterfeiting, bogus franchising, and murder.
Harry gets hired by the wife of a mob boss to find her missing brother but he soon gets tied up in rough business, including the death of the mobster's enforcer.
Harry gets himself shot and it causes great changes in his life. He's now neat, polite, and organised. Unfortunately, the wound also has erased his memory completely of the case that he's working on.
An old ex-con friend of Harry's was in the wrong place at the wrong time and is now accused of stealing art, and Harry has to compete with a hot shot insurance investigator for the case, and to find the real thief.
Strange things are happening in Harry's world. Ellie's client is a rich kid who is in jail for assaulting his girlfriend, and he doesn't want to be set free. Apparently, there's a connection to the body that is sometimes in Harry's trunk and sometimes not.
What should be a joyous event, a birthday, is turning out to be a not so happy day for Ellie, who has become the target for someone who wants her dead.
Harry gets help out-hustling a pool shark from a broke student while equally broke Ellie puts the little money that she has into what sounds like a scam.
Ellie is enlisted by the prosecution in a murder trial while Harry goes to work for the defense attorney who has trouble believing their defendant didn't commit the crime.
