Iris is watching Bronze. Bronze is following Carolyn. Carolyn is sleeping with Billy. Now Billy is dead and a killer is coming for them all. Washington, DC, 1997: A city stumbling toward recovery after a decade of violence, drugs, AIDS, and exodus. Bronze Goldberg-a soft-boiled private detective in a hard-boiled world-scrapes out a living stalking the steps of cheating spouses while bearing the trauma of the past like an open wound. But his latest assignment, surveilling the indiscretions of a stunning femme fatale, has entangled him in the murder of an up-and-coming congressman and made him the target of an unstoppable assassin. Meanwhile, the spiraling chaos of Bronze's dangerous adventures has attracted the obsessive attention of his landlord, Iris Margaryan, a brilliant romance novelist who may hold the missing piece in the puzzle of Bronze's fatal past. Can Bronze survive long enough to reach the ultimate truth? A gripping noir mystery-both intensely provocative and darkly thrilling-Blood and Mascara descends into the depths of the human soul before exploding in an ending too shocking to ever forget.