1920s Silent Era Hollywood. Carbine International Pictures is making The Devil's Playground, 'the greatest horror movie of all time', about a mediaeval community that saves itself from the Black Death by turning to the demon and Lord of Hell, Beelzebub, for protection. Based on a mysterious screenplay, in turn based on a novel written by a defrocked priest, The Devil's Playground is rumored to be the subject of a deadly curse.
When the film's glamorous star Norma Carlton, 'the most desirable woman in the world', is found dead in her luxurious Hollywood Hills home, everything points to a suicide. Cynical studio fixer Mary Rourke moves quickly to cover up anything that could involve the studio in a scandal.
However, when she realizes she has been duped into helping cover up a murder, Mary Rourke, more used to concealing truth, finds herself seeking it out.
When the production of the movie becomes beset with horrific accidents, and people connected to Norma Carlton are murdered or disappear, Rourke sinks deeper into the darkness behind the glamor of Golden Age Hollywood. She finds herself navigating a world of speakeasies and secret societies, occultists and crooked officials.
