Shanghai. 1926. Exotic, sexually liberated and pulsing with life,
it is a place and a time where anything seems possible. For policeman Richard Field, it represents a brave new world away from the past he is trying to escape. His first moment of active duty is the brutal and sadistic murder of a young White Russian woman, Lena Orlov. The key to the investigation seems to be Lena's neighbour, Natasha Medvedev. But can he really trust someone for whom self-preservation is the only goal?
With the International police force riven with rivalries, it is soon clear that Field must make his own way through the investigation. And in a city where reality is a dangerous luxury, Field is driven into the darkness beyond the dazzle of society to a world where everything has its price and the truth seems certain to be a fatal commodity...