Dr. Dan Rudbeck is an academic physician in a small Ohio city whose career has been derailed somewhat by his abrasive, politically incorrect nature and interest in numerous eclectic areas outside of medicine. He is best known for his fictional character Barclay Dixon, the "Amalgam-Man," which spawned several novels and a short-lived TV series. His latest uninvited investigation concerns two seemingly unrelated buildings which burn to the ground within a one week period. There is no evidence of arson, but the Amalgam-Man knows otherwise, as he suspects the use of an accelerant so ubiquitous no one besides him would think of it