Mario Leme is a low-ranking detective in the São Paolo civil police. Every day on the way to work he sets off early and drives through the favela known as Paraisópolis - Paradise City. It's a pilgrimage: his wife Renata was gunned down at an intersection here a year ago, the victim of a stray bullet in a conflict between drug dealers.

One morning, parked near the place where Renata died, he sees an SUV careen out of control and flip over. The driver Leo is killed, but before his body is removed, Leme is sure he sees bullet wounds. Leo's death wasn't an accident, he was murdered. Soon, his girlfriend turns up dead too. And if they were killed deliberately, perhaps Renata was too...

Leme finds himself immersed further and further in the dark underbelly of Brazilian society, as corruption seeps from the highest to the lowest echelons, and the devastating truth about Renata begins to emerge.