Following immediately on the heels of her previous book, Pirate King, it is 1924 and Russell and Holmes are still in the French protectorate of Morocco. Holmes has gone to visit his distant cousin, Marechal Hubert Lyautey, the French Resident General who administers the protectorate, while Russell finished her commitment to Fflytte Films. But when he returns to meet Russell as agreed he discovers that she left the film encampment suddenly in the night, in the company of a young native boy, abandoning her luggage, and leaving just a brief note to say she was going to the city of Fez. And there has been no word since.
While Holmes returns to Fez to hunt for his wife, Russell awakens in a strange room, with a pounding head and no memory of who she is. But she has blood on her hands, fragmented recollections of violence and pain and loss, and a conviction that her life is in danger from enemies that lurk in the shadows.
Morocco is a troubled land, split between the competing colonial powers of France and Spain, with rich iron deposits that a powerful German company wants to exploit. The Rif tribes, Berbers from the mountains, are fighting to establish an autonomous Republic; meanwhile a notorious bandit is pushing his claim to the throne of Morocco. And who should Russell and Holmes discover in the midst of all this intrigue but their friends and comrades from Palestine, ( see Oh Jerusalem! and Justice Hall) Mahmoud and Ali Hzar, undercover agents for Holmes' brother Mycroft and the British government.
King manages to insert Russell and Holmes very convincingly into the historical intrigues of colonialism, left to fester unresolved in the aftermath of World War I, inexorably sweeping the world into the maelstrom of another cataclysmic conflict.
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