From the time John J. Macreedy ventures off the prepare in Black Rock, he feels a chill from the neighborhood inhabitants. The town is just a bit on the guide and few if any outsiders ever gone to the place. Macreedy himself is tight-lipped about the reason for his excursion and he finds that the inn rejects him a room, the nearby carport declines to lease him an auto and the sheriff is a pointless lush. It's obvious that local people have something to cover up yet when he at long last lets them know that he is there to address a Japanese-American rancher named Kamoko, he touches a nerve so touchy that he will spend the following 24 hours battling for his life.
