Veteran of the American Civil War, failed husband, ex-lawman now turned novelist, Denton is an uncomfortable outsider in class-ridden turn-of-the-century England. But he is about to be plunged into the dark heart of a society where privilege and propriety hide unspeakable horrors. When a seeming madman turns up at his door declaring he has just seen Jack the Ripper, Denton dismisses his lurid ravings as the syptoms of sexual dementia. But when a prostitute's horribly mutilated body is discovered that night in the Minories, Denton suspects there is a connection between the two events. While the police investigation grinds towards a seemingly preordained conclusion, Denton becomes obsessed with finding out who Stella Minter really was and who killed her - a search that leads him by degrees into London's grim sexual underbelly, and to an uncomfortable confrontation with his own desires.