On a flight to a birding tour in Australia, Margaret Smith develops a friendship with Hammond ("Porky") Frank. On the first part of the tour, they become close friends, although Margaret ("Maggie") becomes suspicious of Porky. On the northern part of the trip, they are joined by a new assistant leader, Jameson Kanger, who begins a scheme with Porky. Left to herself, Maggie spends time with other tour members, especially Patricia Shaper, a young Olympic Women's Trap Skeet champion. Kanger drugs Shaper and rapes her. Patsy confides in Maggie and they avoid Kanger and Porky the rest of the tour, although Porky renews his relationship with Maggie when she returns to Galveston, Texas. She arranges a meeting for him with Mackensie Craft, a wealthy birder willing to pay to see a rare and supposedly extinct Eskimo curlew. The proposed sighting goes awry as Shaper intrudes and, in the confusion, Craft kills Hammond and Kanger. Two local policemen try to solve the murders. They eventually do even though they are also working on a case involving a serial rapist, but Craft disappears. So, the murder mystery becomes a manhunt during which the policemen are married by women who help them apprehend the serial rapist.
