W.T. "Codfish" Brac finds the girl of his dreams in the manwary heiress, Opal Vital. After a somewhat tortured courtship the two marry and are sensationally happy. Alas, their son, Sonny, only knows his mother for ten years when she goes down to stay. Codfish, by design, becomes a bit of an outrage and uses his share of his late wife's fortune to fund his activities. He buys LIVE magazine, a regional slick which is in need of a complete overhaul. that it gets as it becomes the crusading, muckraking journal LIVE/DIE. Editor Roy Incisor brings a scandal-wrapped political story to the new enterprise and the game is on.Codfish uses Sonny as his lawyer/foil and that puts the young man in the middle of an unseemly scandal. The ace investigative reporters, John and Juan Lawn, who are indentical twins, carry most of the burden as they search for truth and dirt. The sordid caper involves a special election for Congress which is about to be fixed or severely tampered with. The Democratic candidate, Gunther S. S. Greil, also an identical twin, is the extortion target as there are pornographhic pictures which apparently cement his moral decay.A major subplot involves the Brac men chasing a dynamite mother/daughter combination. Anita and Astroid know what they want and after a few false starts it turns out to be the Bracs.The story winds its way through innumerable capers and foolery to a logical or illogical conclusion depending on the reader's whim. Democracy is saved, the good girls get the guys and the standards of magazine journalism are once again lowered.