Comedy club owner and occasional performer Channing Hayes thought the comedy business was tough, but in this second Last Laff mystery—following Killer Routine—by Agatha Award finalist Alan Orloff, it's a stroll in the park compared to politics. When Hayes and his business partner Artie attend a congressional campaign event for their friend Thomas Lee's nephew, masked thugs storm in and break up Lee's restaurant with baseball bats. The candidate's handlers insist that the police not be involved, so Channing agrees to investigate—and soon finds himself immersed in a corrupt world of payoffs, gangs, illicit affairs, blackmail, and murder.