Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children, is a renowned linguistics professor who starts to forget words. When she receives a devastating diagnosis, Alice and her family find their bonds tested.

A child is traumatized when his father, a stuntman, dies in an attempt to go over Niagara Falls. Later, his mother meets and marries a truck driver, and things seem to be going OK. Then the new husband's creepy brother shows up, and the boy begins to get a sense that neither of the brothers is quite what they claim to be.

While Popeye Doyle is investigating what appears to be a very simple drug overdose, he becomes involved in international intrigue. The Mosad and various other foreign diplomatic figures turn up everywhere he goes. The drug overdose becomes a very involved murder case.