Convicted of murder in 1956, Lis Benedict has served her long sentence and just been released from jail. Her daughter, Judy, convinced of her mother's innocence, persuades All Souls Legal Cooperative to reinvestigate her mother's case. Sharon McCone loves a challenge but has little affection for the cold and unlikable Lis. Then, suddenly, the woman in question is dead, a vicious threat is scrawled in red paint across the front of Sharon's house, and San Francisco's #1 P.I. is following a fresh trail of death that leads back to the '50s in search of a killer who has engineered a fatal cover-up and built a brilliant career on murder.