Lives are being traded and identities bought and sold, a sinister traffic that would otherwise go undetected if it weren’t for a car accident that takes the life of Maia Stevens, a famous actress who turns out to be not to be Maia at all. For that matter, she isn’t even a woman but rather a transsexual.

The stunning discovery is made by Michael Reiss, a pathologist conducting the autopsy. But if the victim isn’t Maia then who is—and where is she? How long has it been since Maia—the real Maia—appeared in public?

Reiss is warned not to publish his sensational findings by a doctor representing the Center for Rehabilitative Medicine, an institution which is actually a front for an organization called the Crown of Thorns. If he complies he will be allowed to find out what happened to the many celebrities, dictators, and Mafiosi who have paid for others to do their dying for them so that they can go on to live a comfortable life with a new face and a new identity.

In time Michael will meet the real Maia but not before he, too, becomes someone else.