A young writer is assigned a difficult task by his editor: he is to write an investigative biography of a death row inmate named Yudai Kiharazaka, a thirty-five-year-old photographer who has been convicted of the murders of two women. Kiharazaka's victims--or his "models"--had been burned alive while the photographer tried to capture the perfect picture of their essences. But trying to unearth the truth about Kiharazaka will force the writer to grapple with horrifying archival material and to interview dangerous, grotesque people--not least of all Kiharazaka himself.