A group of wealthy, powerful men, The Committee, has been organized to run Canada by all but guaranteeing that their hand-picked candidate wins the next federal election. The candidate is a popular singer greatly admired by people from 40 to 100, partly because he has an impeccable reputation and has remained faithful for decades to the high-school sweetheart who became his wife. All is not what it seems, and the candidate and some members of The Committee, including its leader, the pompous, self-obsessed owner of a television network, have a closetful of skeletons, including the rape and killing of a runaway teenaged girl in the 1960s. A journalist is writing a book that will expose all, but before it can be published, he is murdered and all traces of the book vanish. It's up to Harry Stark, curmudgeonly Toronto police detective, to bring the perpetrators to justice and balance the books.