Shanghai, 1926. A city of British Imperial civil servants, American gun-runners, Russian princesses & Chinese gangsters, where heroin is available on room service & everything is for sale. Exotic, sexually liberated & pulsing with life, it is a place & time where anything seems possible.
For Richard Field, it represents a brave new world away from the past he is trying to escape. Seconded to the police force, his first moment of active duty is a brutal crime scene. A young White Russian woman, Lena Orlov, lies spreadeagled on her bed, sadistically murdered. As he begins to peer through the glittering surface to the murky depths beneath, Field sees a world beyond the glamour of the city