As a police detective in Bombay, Inspector George Sansi is used to struggling for order in one of the world's most exuberantly chaotic cities. But the mutilated corpse discovered in Bollywood taxes even Sansi's formidable skills. Could the murder have been a cult initiation gone hideously wrong? Was it the work of a serial killer? Was the victim killed as part of a political cover-up? Answering these questions will take Sansi from Bombay's teeming slums to the film community's palaces of excess and the menacing haunts of India's underworld.

A sleepy community on the Indian coast, Goa is a paradise for the international hippie brigade, drawn by the golden beaches and endless supply of cheap dope. Lately, though, professionals have moved in on the drug trade, and even the sweetest smoke can't cover the stink of corruption that's pouring from the highest levels of local government. George Sansi, the half-Indian/half-English cop from Bombay, thinks he's seen about the worst the world can offer. But when he gets a call to help clean up Goa, he finds himself unprepared for the grimly dark side of paradise.

India cherishes the river city of Varanasi, for it is here on the burning ghats that the bodies of the devout dead are cremated and their ashes scattered over the Ganges. Then, as thousands of pilgrims bathe in the holy waters, a lethal chemical spill swirls down the river, consuming the flesh of all who come in contact with it. More than a thousand people die in agony. Who is responsible? As Bombay attorney George Sansi pursues the case, he amasses more and more evidence implicating the invincible, rich, and unscrupulous magnate Madhuri Amlani. Sansi braces for a vicious legal battle—but the showdown in court is only the opening skirmish in an all-out war involving cover-ups, blackmail, and assassination at the highest levels of power...