She was a woman of uncompromising beauty who had come to Los Angeles to seek fame and fortune. Her quest ended in an abandoned lot on the outskirts of the city.

First on the crime scene is newshound Bill Fowley, and at his side is Chicago private eye Nathan Heller, in town to help launch the West Coast branch of his famed detective agency. The police arrive at the brutal scene of the crime and suddenly the postwar world of Hollywood is plunged into the terror that is the Black Dahlia case.

Only one problem persists: uncovering the woman's identity.

Her name was Elizabeth Short, and Heller vividly remembers her from Chicago. But revealing that he knew her can only land him atop a very short list of suspects. Heller's own investigation starts with what he knew of the doomed wannabe starlet, with the crazed phone call he received from her just days before her death.

But looking into her past means opening old wounds - and revealing secrets of his own. At the risk of his marriage, his career, and maybe even his life, Heller is drawn into an inescapable maze to lay bare a terrifying truth behind the facade of Hollywood's make-believe world.