It's October 1950 in sunny Los Angeles, but there's deep, dark trouble in paradise for white private dick Matt Moulton. He has taken on the most dangerously complicated case of his career, one involving racial enslavement and murder, police corruption, and corporate organized crime.

Moulton's high-risk, high-reward client is a black woman who leads her dead white husband's mob in Chicago. Her daughter disappeared without a trace after moving to LA to pursue the nearly impossible dream of becoming a movie star. The mob lady believes that no one is better suited to find out what happened to her girl than the tough, cynical, but racially sensitive Moulton, the lost love of whose life was black.

The story turns pure noir when Moulton discovers that the daughter remains alive, the drugged captive of a corporate movie studio operating a black-sex slave ring.

He reports the slavery service to the LA police, but-not wanting to alienate Hollywood power-they dismiss Moulton as a "white knight." Meanwhile, the studio tries on three occasions to silence him-permanently. The embattled Moulton must find a way to not only solve his case but also somehow survive it.