The Eclipse of the Soul is a fictional crime story loosely based on the true story of the disappearance and murder of three young women in Perth the during the 1990s. The narrative emphasizes interpersonal relationships as the characters' lives intermingle. The story centres on one of the three girls, Clarissa, and features the abduction and murder of the other two, Sonya and Elisabeth. The subplot centres on a man named Joseph who, suffering a lifetime of physical and mental abuse, kills his mother and buries her in the coastal bush where, not much later, Sonya's killer throws her body. A jogger finds the body, and a task force headed by Detective Francois Fountain begins the investigation of her murder. Then Elisabeth goes missing. Joseph runs an auto-repair shop and employs Clarissa's cousin Oliver. The cousins share a house with Johanna, a medical student, who becomes romantically involved with Detective Fountain. The killer, Dallas, a sadist who lives out his fantasies with a prostitute, meets Clarissa in a nightclub and is fascinated by her. When they were parting, Clarissa tells him that he can find her most Saturday nights at her local pub. Looking for her, Dallas first meets Clarissa's look-alike, Sonya, and then Elisabeth. He tortures, rapes, and kills both girls. While Elisabeth's corpse is still in his freezer, he finally meets up with Clarissa at the pub, abducts her, and locks her in his underground prison like he did with Sonya and Elisabeth, but he neither tortures nor rapes her, as she becomes special to him. Joseph, who devises and executes an elaborate plan to explain his mother's disappearance, meets Detective Fountain socially and finds out where the killer dumped Sonya - close to his mother's grave. Although the police task force didn't find Joseph's mother's grave during their search of the area, Joseph feels the need to get rid of her body once and for all. As he digs up his mother's remains, Dallas drives down to the coastal bush to dump Elisabeth's body, and Joseph catches him, initiates Clarissa's rescue, and dumps his mother's remains in shark-infested waters. Dallas is sentenced to life in prison, and Joseph's mother is never found.
