Rudyard Mack, New York Library detective, comes out of retirement to solve a cold case—a woman murdered in the library stacks—and finds it is connected to big banking, Israeli and other secret services, and operatives in the United Nations. He is helped by his girl friend, Arbuthnott Vine, retired librarian, to track down agents in drug and weapons smuggling and money-laundering, which leads them to men of wealth and power, who run shadow governments more influential than the real governments. OVERWORLD/UNDERWORLD follows the two library detective novels featuring Mack and Vine: THE JENNY and THE GRAND CONSPIRACY.