A tipsy young woman seeking aid on a desolate highway disappears into the inky black night. A retired schoolteacher is stabbed to death in broad daylight. Two women are butchered after closing time in a small-town beauty parlor. These and other bizarre acts of cruelty and psychopathology are linked only by the killer's use of luxury vehicles and a baffling lack of motive. The ultimate whodunits, these crimes demand the attention of LAPD detective Milo Sturgis and his collaborator on the crime beat, psychologist Alex Delaware.

What begins with a solitary bloodstain in a stolen sedan quickly spirals outward in odd and unexpected directions, leading Delaware and Sturgis from the well-heeled center of L.A. society to its desperate edges, across the paths of commodities brokers and transvestite hookers, and as far away as New York City, where the search thaws out a long-cold case and exposes a grotesque homicidal crusade.

The killer proves to be a fleeting shape-shifter, defying identification, leaving behind dazed witnesses and death - and compelling Alex and Milo to confront the true face of murderous madness.