Lloyd Hopkins, a hard-boiled American police detective is on the trail of a mass murderer who is victimizing women in Los Angeles. The pursuit leads him through a world that has become his own natural habitat - a nasty world of crime, drugs, prostitution and male hustlers where "innocence kills" and continued exposure corrupts. Paradoxically, it's also a world of love, secret admirers, romantic feminist poets and modern chivalry. And for the viewer, it's the background for an exciting, suspense movie.