It is the year 1939 and Adam Paradise, the creature of the Frankenstein legend made real, has returned to civilization to discover his place in the world.

While enjoying a pleasant evening of moviegoing in Chinatown with his friend Hank, they end up in the middle of a brazen robbery.

Adam thwarts the holdup, which puts him on the hit list of not only the Tongs, but Yakuza killers, the Italian mob, and a mysterious mastermind bent on starting an ethnic gang war.

With his faithful Roma secretary, Vandoma Kalderash, he and Hank are soon plunged into a whirlwind of ambushes and deadly double-crosses.

The patchwork private eye also discovers a level of reality beyond the material world that shakes the foundations of all his beliefs.

Can he defeat the unseen forces of this evil without losing the very humanity he's trying to attain? And who—or what—is Daitengu, a creature that knows his deepest secrets?