The four members of Dante's Delight Purgatorio do not consider what they do to be in any sense sado­masochistic. Of course, society at large takes a different view. And society at large includes Julie Whitcomb's new­met lover, Police Detective Dave Clayton, for whom she hopes to retire from purgatorial activity. Society at large also includes Angela Garvey, childhood sweetheart of the lad Julie hopes to mold into her Dante's Delight replacement, Corwin "Thesaurus Kid" Poe.When murdered bodies start turning up wearing the membership mark of Dante's Delight, it falls to Dave's immediate superior, Detective Sergeant Lestrade, to determine the guilt or innocence of the obvious prime suspects. And Rosemary Lestrade got into police work less to catch the guilty than to clear the innocent.

Spanish Inquisitor Don Felipe considers himself a loyal servant of Holy Church. Despite his lifelong friendship with the Jewish Gamito, despite the courtly love for their Islamic playfellow's sister that inspired him to celibacy and the priesthood (not necessarily in that order). Despite his own secret sin, despite his own arrest and long imprisonment in midlife by the Inquisition he serves, despite his love for and private marriage with the barren Romany woman Pilar.Why, then, these nightmares that recurrently trouble his sleep, in which his ancestress the heretic Raymonde and purported descendant the Pagan Rosemary guide him through terrible visions of the evil humans do to one another in the name of righteousness?