Often controversial, sometimes sexual, and not without black humour, Love on the Killing Floor opens in Toronto in 1992 with Gilchrist, a down-and-out portrait photographer, being searched on a bus in the middle of the night by police he suspects are looking for a local rapist. His town is changing. Life wasn't always like this. But now, with an estranged wife who's convinced he's a bum and a new girlfriend who refuses to be tamed, Gilchrist finds himself weaving in and out of bars and parties amidst an increasingly peculiar cast of characters including a troubled dominatrix, a hostile Rastafarian, and a recently separated father suffering from his own share of demons. Building on a shared foundation of racism and paranoia of immigration, radical feminism, gay activism and multiculturalism, they soon find themselves embroiled in the city's first race riot. But when Gilchrist unexpectedly falls for a black woman with her own contentious notions about whites, he is exposed to a culture of which he was relatively ignorant, and completely misinformed, forcing him to reconsider a few hard-held beliefs. Ironically, when his old friendships start to break down, it is with her people he begins to associate, but not before a shocking reencounter with his ex shakes him awake once more.