Paris, 1900: a couple are horribly murdered by a masked man with a metal claw who rips their hearts out. The sole survivor and witness to the massacre is a young girl. Twelve years later in Rome a new wax museum is opened, whose main attractions are lifelike recreations of gruesome murder scenes. A young man bets that he will spend the night in the museum but is found dead the morning after. Soon, people start disappearing from the streets of Rome and the wax museum halls begin filling with new figures...

In the city of Rome, Mirko Reggiani is not only a university student who can't happily graduate from the university but also an amateur and only one detective of MARLOV & CO. One day he meets a beautiful fair lady in a department store and falls immediately in love with her, but his best female friend hinders him. Soon, in a rather strange way, Mirko meets the lady, who is actually an unhappy housewife named Vera Grimaldi, again. Unfortunately it is not a happy reunion; both Mirko and Vera are deeply and almost independently trapped in a twisted web of vicious crime...