Gloria Stanford was very sexy, very rich and very dead. Found in her apartment, she had been shot twice in the heart. All her credit cards and i.d. were gone, but apart from that there seemed to be no motive at all. It's only when the detective in charge, Steve Carella, starts to receive bizarre, cryptic notes in the mail that he realises that something bigger than a simple homicide is going on. It quickly emerges that the Deaf Man is back, and he seems to have acquired a morbid fascination with the works of William Shakespeare in the interim. But as the notes flood into steve Carella's office, the 87th precinct get no closer to the truth. Perhaps the answer lies with a beutiful prostitute who seems to be organizing the deliveries? Or with the brutal murder of a notorious pimp?