'Meet Thorpe, who has a franchise from Death. Meet his car, a Ventura large and black...'A rhapsody in colour and black and white. A political satire, comic fantasy, detective novel...featuring Death and Romance, Heroes, Villans, Demons, Succubi...confused men, fey women, a child who is fated to replay old records, a journalist whose hair and car are both yellow, two boys in the movie business, another who builds fish, several competing producers/directors...giving up Murder, Treachery, a talking penis...incorporating Pain and an idea of Justice in a city that is all cities, the mother metropolis: ILEUM.