This note contains spoilers for the book.

This one centers around a major auto accident in an obscure Florida town. The first half of the book is character vignettes of all the vehicles racing towards their destined meeting, starting each chapter with sentences like "A half hour before the worst multiple-car crash..." and "Forty minutes befor her violent death...." Chapters one through six are like that. Seven starts with "Some thoughts on the question of mass and momentum", and shows his fannish nature pretty clearly. Eight is the actual accident.

It's a pretty interesting set of characters. MacDonald is pretty good at character sketches, and he plays that heavily in this book. We've got a recently widowed architect, a badly dysfunctional family, two bank robbers and the girl they picked up, a good truck driver, and a good secretary (and cast-off mistress).