Having in the previous book met and fell in love with the deeply religious Jewish Orthodox widow Rina Lazarus, LAPD detective sergeantPeter Decker takes Rina's boys on a camping vacation - cut short when Sammy wandered off and found two burned and buried skeletons. Peter finds himself assigned the case, in spite of his status in the Sex and juvie division, due to an unexpected lack in departmental manpower. When starting the case, he is introduced to forensic dentist Annie Hennon, who helps identify the victims as two young women, who - though having been both killed by the same gun and both their bodies burned - were of very dissimilar social backgrounds: the one's teeth having been well cared for, the other one having had only very rudimentary dental care and having suffered from Congenital syphilis. Decker embarks on the long process of tracking down who were the two young women, where they might have been and who they may have been involved with - following slender clues and descending into the most seamy dives behind Holywood's glittering facade. As it turns out, one of the victims was Lindsey Bates - a happy middle class teenager, who was abducted and horribly tortured, mutilated, killed and burned, with the whole process taken down on a "Snuff film" made to the specifications of a depraved group of very wealthy men. The other body was that of Kate Armbuster aka "Countess Dracula" - a young prostitute who took to sadism and Satanism, played an active role in torturing and killing Bates, and was then killed herself by an accomplice and the two bodies burned and dumped together in the hills. The search also leads Decker to photographer Cecil Pode and his sons, Dustin and Earl Pode. Earl Pode is found dead in the same grave as the girls, and Decker finds that Pode's best friend Cameron is the main culprit - an utterly ruthless and unscrupulous killer, the others having been his helpers and accomplices in the production and distribution of the snuff films. The case takes a toll on Decker's Talmud studies with Rav Schulman at the yeshiva. Seeing the film depicting the systematic torture and mutilation of the innocent girl causes Decker a crisis of faith, making him for a time reject Rav Shulman's God who allows such Evil in His world. Decker's bitterness is increased by his failure to save Kiki, a spirited teenage prostitute who is the same age as Decker's daughter Cindy and looks like her - and who comes to a predictable sad end despite all Decker's efforts to save and redeem her. Decker's spiritual crisis also strains his relationship with his beloved Rina. Because of the stress of their maybe/maybe not marital path, at the end of the book Rina moves to New York City with her former in-laws - but before her departure spending an intensive night of love-making with Peter, her intense love for him having led her to violate her own deeply held objection to sex outside marriage. Then they separate that they can both concentrate on preparing themselves for the future - her to take a job in a relative's company to stop feeling like a charity case, he to continue his Talmudic studies and decide if he really can lead a Jewish religious life for himself and not just for the purpose of being able to marry her. Decker's success in solving the Bates case and finding evidence implicating the "client" who ordered the snuff film - a powerful and utterly corrupt and depraved steel magnate - gives Decker a sense of closure, and he can once again get involved in sincere prayer.
