"Henry Tyler is a failing private detective in San Francisco. When the love of his life, a Korean-American woman named Irene - who happens to be married to his brother John - commits suicide, he clings despairingly to her ghost. Struggling to turn grief and guilt into something precious, he employs his professional skills to track down the supernatural Queen of the Prostitutes, who first gives him a "false Irene" (in reality a heroin-poisoned whore), and then herself. While Henry lives his new life of nightmare beauty and degradation, John defends himself against Irene's memory by means of stoic blindness. John is an ambitious young contract lawyer, and one of his most lucrative projects is to draw up the paperwork for a mysterious establishment in Las Vegas called Feminine Circus, whose proprietor just happens to be hunting for the Queen. "--BOOK JACKET.