On January 15 1947 the torture-ravished body of a beautiful young woman is found in a vacant lot. The victim makes headlines as the Black Dahlia—and so begins the greatest manhunt in California history. Caught up in the investigation are Bucky Bleichert and Lee Blanchard: Warrants Squad cops friends and rivals in love with the same woman. But both are obsessed with the Dahlia—driven by dark needs to know everything about her past to capture her killer to possess the woman even in death. Their quest will take them on a hellish journey through the underbelly of postwar Hollywood to the core of the dead girl's twisted life past the extremes of their own psyches—into a region of total madness.