When a naked corpse is found in the Luxembourg Gardens, Captain Gereau approaches Max Anderson to take on the case to aid a fellow Canadian. Sarah St. John, the wife of the deceased, is the primary suspect but Max has his doubts. Mark St. John was in Paris, supposedly to visit his mistress, Irina Pavlovna, but he clearly had other reasons to be there – politics, arms smuggling and stolen Italian money. Max soon finds himself embroiled in the violent world of French and Russian politics and the even more uncertain world of les liaisons dangereuses.