[1] Set in 1983 Manhattan, the book tells the intersecting stories of Ginny Kurva, a twenty-one-year-old polymath working as a prostitute in Times Square; and Nicolette Aster, a safety inspector at Fresh Kills Landfill who moonlights as a serial killer.

[2] Reviews tended to praise its complex treatment of female characters within the horror genre, particularly Nicolette, who received favorable comparisons to Patrick Bateman.

Ginny Kurva is a twenty-one-year-old, alcoholic polymath living in a welfare hotel 1983 Times Square, where she cares for her paraplegic younger sister, Trisha, by working as a prostitute.

Ostensibly subservient to her pimp, an elderly Polish gangster known as "The Colonel," Ginny has manipulated him into making her the de facto head of his criminal operations.

One evening, Roger informs Ginny that he witnessed one of her girls, Tina, assumed to have run away, being lured into the back of a distinct green van.

Plagued by frequent hallucinations involving murder and violence, Nicolette hides behind a mask of sanity, which allows her to move about the landfill unmolested; after hours, she travels into the city to abduct sex workers, bringing them back to hunt and kill.

The incident takes an intense psychological toll on Ginny, who has long repressed the moral implications of her work, and she begins drinking more heavily.

Nicolette's memories reveal that she was severely disturbed as a child but doted upon by her overprotective father, who guarded her from the wrath of her abusive, superficial mother, who herself regarded the average-looking girl as monstrous compared to her own physical beauty.

Following her mother's death, Nicolette's father had her committed to an insane asylum where she spent the remainder of her youth, where she learned to mimic "normal" behavior.

Due to the phonetic similarity between "Aster" and the Greek Asterion, Nicolette has come to believe that she is a reincarnation of the Minotaur, and that the city of New York offers her prostitutes as "tributes" to hunt, kill, and eat in accordance with the myth.

To enhance her fantasy, Nicolette has constructed a suit of armor, including a horned helmet with incorporated prescription lenses to correct her severe hyperopia.

There, she explains the situation and tells them all to flee New York, taking their day's earnings with them rather than pay their usual share to the Colonel and providing them with extra money out of her own savings.

The pair confess their love for one another and Ginny agrees to take Roger with her when she leaves the city, telling him to wait with Trish while she goes to dispose of the shotgun he used to kill The Colonel.

[10] Rue Morgue's Monica S. Kuebler also gave the book a positive review, saying "...the final showdown is a fitting knockdown, drag-out battle between two of the toughest broads in the Big Apple.

"[11] Cemetery Dance praised the book's period detail while also expressing surprise that, in contrast to simply being a standard slasher, it was instead "a delicious piece of grindhouse literature stocked with strong characters, a vivid sense of place, and real, raw emotion.

[15] Australian novelist Isobel Blackthorn likewise praised the book, saying "Written with grace, restraint and poise, the prose is evocative, at times almost poetic; edgy when it needs to be, sometimes suggestive...And when the horror does take place, its detail is measured and carefully crafted.