A series of interlocking crimes send St-Cyr and Kohler into the heart of the Parisian underworld

It is February 1943, and Paris is under a blackout. For three years, the French inspector Jean-Louis St-Cyr and Hermann Kohler of the Gestapo have investigated the mundane violence of Nazi-occupied France, but never have they experienced such a cold, sleeting winter. While investigating a burgled stamp collector's shop, they get a call telling them that they went to the wrong crime scene--they were supposed to have been sent to comfort a woman who was attacked for running around with Nazis and their collaborators. The rapist's timing was perfect--so perfect that the two detectives wonder if they were deliberately sent to the wrong place.

They next follow up on a tip about a body dumped in a cellar. The young man they find has been stripped naked, savagely murdered, and left to rot. Was he a homosexual? A pimp? A Resistance fighter? Theft, murder, rape--conspiracy. It is just another night in Paris under the Nazis.