The diary read, "It is settled. I am going to kill him."

And with these words begins as unusual and spectacular a mystery as anyone could ask for. Johnny Kendall, a photographer whose job has been squeezed out in a merger, sets up shop in a small state capital as a commercial photographer. He lands the job of taking pictures of corpses for the sheriff's office, and that is how he manages to be in on the ground floor of the attempted ax murder of Dr. Harry Rigmire in his weekend fishing lodge. Kendall's busy camera catches all the evidence both in the unsuccessful attempted murder and in the successful one which follows.

Peopled with characters spicy and salty by turn, displaying real novelty in both plot and method of detection, Focus on Murder is equally interesting in human terms.