Hollywood, the late 1930s. Raymond Chandler writes detective stories for pulp magazines, and drinks more than he should.

Boris Karloff plays monsters in the movies, and is a genial, cricket-playing member of the British filmland colony on the shores of the Pacific. Both understand that these streets are dark with something more than night. Together, these English public school men in exile investigate mysterious matters in a town run by human and inhuman monsters. Under Home House, the mock gothic mock mansion of a film mogul, is a mad science dungeon just like in the movies - where an experiment has gone dangerously wrong, or even more dangerously right. Fiery death spills onto Sunset Boulevard. John Devlin, an investigator for the District Attorney's office who scores high on insubordination, and Laurel Ives, a woman with as many lives as a cat and names to match, barely escape Home House. Fired by the DA, Devlin enlists Ray and Billy – Raymond Chandler and William Pratt (Boris Karloff) – to work the case, which threatens to expose Hollywood's most horrific secrets. These people will find out more than they should about the way this town works. And about each other. And, oh yes, monsters aren't just for the movies