Jim Rooney has just finished his memoir about his days as a drummer for the Johnny Sands Band, a hugely popular 1970s American rock group, when he dies in a suspicious car crash. His widow suspects he was murdered, in part because all traces of the manuscript have disappeared, and hires private investigator Mike McMahon, who moonlights as a junior college instructor teaching a class in the history of rock 'n' roll, to look into it. McMahon is torn between his commitment to the case and his commitment to his on-again off-again girlfriend, Becka Goldberg, professor of Anglo-Saxon literature at San Francisco State. Ultimately, McMahon uncovers the truth behind the band's untimely end, a result of the death of its front man in a plane crash the night of what turned out to be their final concert, all of which would have been part of Rooney's memoir.