Set in and around post-war Toronto, I Am Not Guilty first appeared in a condensed form in the February 1954 Ladies' Home Journal. That same year, it was published in full by Doubleday as M'Lord, I Am Not Guilty. Helen Graham has been acquitted in the murder of her wealthy husband, Alberta oil baron Steven Graham, but the eyes of the public continue to view her with suspicion. Worried for her future, and that of her young son, she sets out to find the true killer. The trail leads to the apartment of another woman-and revelations about her dead husband's secret life-then continues to a growing bedroom community in suburban Toronto. What the widow doesn't realize is that she is not alone in her pursuit of the murderer or how ready that murderer is to kill again.