Lulu Marketplace

When an enigmatic stranger asks private investigator and self-proclaimed realist Birk Dillinger for help protecting a woman’s life, the woman’s disappearance impels Dillinger on what at first seems like a straight-forward murder case of a prostitute called Maria but devolves into a search for a woman who might not have been a prostitute at all. Facts are scant and not only does the identity of the victim remain a mystery, so does what happened to her since there is neither a corpse nor anyone willing to confirm the victim’s whereabouts. Despite Birk’s efforts, a man who calls himself D faults Birk for doing nothing to save Maria, while also leaving him packages containing body parts. Suspecting that the man who hired him was also the murderer, Birk struggles in vain to prove it, but facts are fleeting; and the more Birk involves himself in the case the more the answers elude him. Confusion snowballs until it feels like no one is what they claim to be and everyone is lying.