Roman police detective Nic Costa has hit the shores of San Francisco to solve a crime that began at the highly anticipated film premiere of Dante's Inferno in Rome. A stranger in a strange city, Nic must unravel a tangle of cryptic clues that point to the nine circles of Dante's Hell and also reference the Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece, Vertigo. Obsession is the key that links Dante and Hitchcock's stories and might also be the motivation behind the antics of this elusive killer.