In the First Place She's Black is a mixed-genre novel: It starts off as science-fiction, after 100 pages makes a quick turn to mystery, and ends up in a courthouse. The protagonist undergoes cryogenics (body freezing) because he has an incurable disease. He wakes up in the 24th century only barely able to deal with the language and customs of the future. He later figures out that it was an elaborate scam and that he was only "vitrified" for three years, during which time a court declared him to be dead. He has to create a new identity; to figure out how to function with no job, no money, no social security number; and to unravel the mystery of who set up the scam. Meanwhile his wife has remarried, his sisters and daughter are fighting over his estate, and lawyers object to his testifying in the court case about his estate because he's legally dead.