In 1882, Lou Andreas Salomé, Frederick Nietzsche, and Paul Rée posed for a photograph (at Nietzsche’s suggestion) to commemorate their decision to live together in a sexless, ménage à trois intellectual community. The famous photograph shows the two men harnessed to a cart with Lou holding a branch in the fashion of a whip. William Bayer has used this photo as a basis to author a dark psychoanalytic thriller, centering on the lives of Salomé, Nietzsche, Freud, and Hitler, as the key to solving the mysterious death of a modern-day Oakland, California dominatrix, through the efforts of Tess, a brilliant performance artist. An unusual assortment of characters to manage, but Bayer pulls it off in grand style.