A young commercial artist, fearing he may have been responsible for the deaths of three women, approaches private investigator Rich Hazzard for help. His bizarre story stretches back more than a century to the impressionist era in Paris and involves a young woman with an equally mysterious past. Why are they both still alive and physically unchanged?

Listening to the artist's account, Hazzard is left to wonder if he is delusional, or the victim of an elaborate medical conspiracy. The young man's mind is full of shadows and aborted experiences that often seem only half real and sometimes contradict facts.

Hazzard's investigation will take him from Paris to a clinic in Geneva, where cutting edge experiments in artificial memory have been carried out, and finally to a remote chateau in the Bernese Alps where he will discover the truth that nearly costs him his life.