How do you catch a killer inside a communal hallucination? World-weary private investigator Stan Scar is about to discover that solving a murder in the real world is one thing, doing so in a swirling, abstract, sensual hallucination! that's quite another! The Lucidia is not real. A marvellous, mutating pleasure boat, it soars through scenes of endless wonder and invention, existing only as a figment in the shared imaginations of its passengers. The rules are simple. The Lucidia carries seven passengers at any time. The eighth member of this secretive little community remains in the real world, tending to the slumbering bodies, feeding and cleaning them and guarding their secret from the outside world. But suddenly one of the passengers disappears. Fearing exposure, the survivors employ Stan Scar, private investigator,but no one, least of all Stan, is quite prepared for what he will uncover...