From the moment when Roddie first saw her among the fifty or sixty other passengers on the Star Ferry he was captivated, little realising how she would change his life, and even if he had, he would still have been powerless to alter the course of events which followed. To Roddie, normally level-headed and conservative, not given to making rash decisions, Juliet Warburton was the antithesis and when he soon learned he could never really trust her, this made no difference to the strength of his attraction towards her.

Hong Kong, five years before the handover to the Chinese in 1997, is the colourful backdrop for what occurred, not only to Roddie Mortimer, but to a number of other people who had, up to that time, not been suspected of being other than they purported to be, Francesca Cristofoli being the exception.

The elusive Francesca Cristofoli : the woman who had succeeded in outwitting those who had been trying to find her after she had made a hasty exit from London. Single-handedly, she had been responsible for carrying out jewellery robberies on both sides of the English Channel. A Parisian by birth, she knew her way around the flesh pots of Europe, being invited to glittering embassy parties in numerous capitals, posing as the perfect guest; a multi-linguist, a witty conversationalist and probably her main attribute, apart from being dexterously light-fingered, she was extremely attractive; Now, over ten years later and, by chance, she is recognised while on a visit to Hong Kong.

Francesca’s arrival in Hong Kong acted as a catalyst. Once more Interpol is involved, but before they confront her, unknowingly, she had led them to the perpetrators of both the theft of a formula for what could be a revolutionary new anti-malaria drug and to the receiving and re-distribution of emeralds being brought illegally into Hong Kong from South America.