When Stefan Corso was tasked with investigating the murders of two girls from a strip club, he thought he was dealing with a typical serial killer. But the detective was wrong. It was a duel challenge addressed personally to him. A deadly struggle was coming: after all, the main suspect—Philip Sobieski, a famous artist who has served seventeen years for robbery and murder—is absolutely sure of his alibi. The deeper the investigation goes, the more Corso and his colleagues plunge into a terrible world where brutal pornography and an old Japanese art of binding victims are far from the only ways evil can manifest. But is it possible to keep one’s mind and soul when pleasure in pain lurks in the darkest cloud looming over unknown works by Goya?