Following the events of Sleeping Underwater, journalist-with-a-death-wish Tom Bradstreet finds himself irritatingly immortal. Languishing in Edmonton of all places, he drinks, takes in the occasional movie with his disagreeable upstairs neighbor, and drinks some more.

The price of this idyllic life is occasionally taking an assignment from the British intelligence agency that keeps tabs on the supernatural. This time his subject is William S. Frankenstein. Formerly the famed Frankenstein monster, now a performance artist who seeks, with the assistance of the North Koreans, to punish the world that created him.

Having long made peace with his status as a supporting character in other people's lives, Tom is alarmed, and not a little annoyed, to be thrust into the spotlight of this particular story.