On a snowy night in 1936, an artist is battered to death behind the locked door of his Tokyo studio. The police find a bizarre testament describing his plan to create Azoth - the ideal woman - from various body parts of his young female relatives. Shortly after, his eldest daughter is raped and murdered. And then hs other daughters and nieces all suddenly disappear. Gradually their dismembered bodies are found, all buried according to the astrological details expounded by the artist. The mysterious genocide grips the nation, baffling authorities and would-be amateur detectives alike, but it remains unsolved for more than 40 years. Then one day in 1979, a document is brought to Kiyoshi Mitarai - astrologer, fortune-teller and self-styled detective. With his own version of Dr. Watson in tow - the illustrator and detective story aficionado Kazumi Ishioka - he sets out on the trail of the invisible perpetrator of the Tokyo Zodiac Murders and the creator of Azoth. This tale of magic and illusion by one of Japan's master mystery storytellers is pieced together like a great stage tragedy. The author sets the reader the challenge of unraveling the mystery before the final curtain.