Della's friend is accused of murdering a rival fashion magazine editor.

Once she'd been a dancer. Now she lies on a sidewalk, her blood seeping into the snow. The detectives of the 87th precinct are learning about ice: in a mulitimillion dollar showbiz scam, in the glittering diamonds that spill out of a dead man's vest, in the veins of a small time pusher. As the detectives scramble for evidence, as the city shivers, a killer is one step ahead, and the heat is still on.

Perry is suing a gutter trash newspaper that is running a story about a love affair between him and Della. The editor also has "dirt" files on an Army General, his banker and other "clients". All of them make little-concealed verbal threats to him at a party but the person that hated him most is a female reporter who the editor had just fired from the paper for attempting to write a serious story. She threatens him and soon after the editor is found, floating in his pool, shot. The reporter is arrested for the crime and Perry, who has a personal stake in this matter, with the aid of Della and Paul set out to solve the mystery. But the other suspects just want the case over with and will go to any lengths to protect their pasts and their secrets

After 16-year-old Cyntoia Brown is sentenced to life in prison, questions about her past, physiology and the law itself call her guilt into question.