Shanghai. 1926. A city of nomads divided into national fiefdoms: British, French, American and Chinese. But over all of these, there is a greater power - of the warlords, the gangsters, the people who make the city tick. A city teeming with the scent of possibility. A city where your most dangerous dream might come true.

For Richard Field, it is a world far away from his experience. Seconded to the police force, his first moment of active duty is a brutal crime scene. A young woman, Lena Orlov, a White Russian, lies spreadeagled on her bed, sadistically murdered. As he begins to peer through the glittering surface to the murky depths beneath, he sees another world - a world where everything has its price, and where human life is merely another means of barter.

With the police force riven with rivalries, petty and political, it becomes clear that he must make his own way through the investigation. His only guide is another beautiful White Russian, Natascha Medvedev, whose allegiance can be bought and for whom self preservation is the ultimate goal.

In a city where appearance is all and reality a dangerous luxury, Field is driven into the darkness beyond the dazzle of society to a world where the basest of human needs are met and where the truth can be a fatal commodity . . .