For Victor Cox, a professor of film history, the Hollywood films noirs are more than his daily life. When his wife is found drowned, Cox is the first murder suspect. He falls in love with a student who looks like the 1920s film star Louise Brooks, but she disappears at a Belgian seaside resort. Smeared in lipstick in the hotel room are the words 'No Sale' - the same words Elizabeth Taylor wrote in the film Butterfield 8. A series of gruesome killings of young women, all modelled on violent deaths in films he knows and loves, lead the police back to Cox...
