Artie Cohen's long-time girlfriend Lily Hanes, has been found beaten up, raped and left for dead in an empty Parisian apartment. In the wintry French capital, where drugs are sold like fries at Macdonalds and the hookers are trucked in with the vegetables, Artie goes after Lily's attackers and finds himself drawn in to a web of sex, death and deceit, struggling with the all-too personal implications of the case as Lily lies in a coma. A brilliantly concieved plot moves Artie from Paris through Europe to Vienna and then, finally, back to his native New York on a roller-coaster ride where there is no return ticket.