1948 Los Angeles. The House Un-American Activities Committee in Washington, D.C. is investigating members of the Communist party and their activities taking root throughout the United States.
Matthew Thornton P.I. is hired by a friend of Humphrey Bogart to recover jewels given to a mobster's mistress and Ernest Hemingway threatened while overseeing the filming of his latest movie.

Thornton uncovers a connection to several murdered women and a communist plot to overthrow the Hollywood film industry with funds generated from a counterfeit currency scheme, laundering the money through Chinatown's illegal gambling, dope and prostitution activities.

The conspirators: Black Jade, a top level female communist from China and now owner of a waterfront nightclub, Shanghai Ruby's, Carson McCullen, a manufacturing executive with a secret past and unwitting celebrity connections and the Communist "Gang of Eight" the writers, producers and directors at Majestic Movie Studios.

Thornton's assisted by a Rhonda Fleming look-a-like moonlighting at the Florentine Gardens burlesque club, an aging actor with a closet full of secrets and a federal vendetta, a gutter-story newspaper reporter, a black jazz musician with a penchant for lost blondes and a homicide police detective, risking his retirement plans.

From Los Angeles to Catalina Island, Thornton and his partners descend into the steamy world of sex, violence, kidnapping, car bombings and murder. Frequenting tattoo parlors, brothels, jazz joints, strip clubs, seedy hotels and rundown apartments, blazing waterfront warehouses and back alley slums, they connect the pieces and dispense justice...the hard way.

David R. Thompson is a former international business executive, managing manufacturing operations at companies in the United States and Canada. He is a graduate of Arizona State University and was on the board of directors of the Algonquin College Industrial Technology program in Ottawa, Canada. He's been an active outdoor sportsman, hunting and fishing in Canada, Alpine skiing in Switzerland, Mohave Desert motorcycle racing in the Adelanto Grand Prix, and participating in California skeet shooting and archery tournaments as well as ocean sailing on his 40-foot black ketch, the Belle Darquise, aka the Black Swan. He's written numerous short stories, and several historical/adventure stories regarding world explorer Thor Heyerdahl (Kon-Tiki & RA expeditions) & western writer and big game fisherman Zane Grey. His new series of noir era Matt Thornton private detective/crime/mystery novels begins with Pandora's Box, and continues with The Blonde with the Ice-Blue Eyes. The novels take place in the Los Angeles area during Hollywood's post-war golden era. David resides in Huntington Beach, California, with his wife Darquise. He is a member of the Private Eye Writers of America.