A young Parisian lawyer is found murdered, burned alive with a flaming tyre around his neck.

For Lola Jost, retired police commissioner, the killer's methods are all too familiar. Her beloved assistant Toussaint Kidjo was dispatched in the same way five years before. Convinced of a connection, and aided by her loyal sidekick Ingrid Diesel, Lola reopens the Kidjo investigation on the sly.

But the murdered lawyer turns out to be the protégé of a shadowy fixer known as "Mister Africa", who is heavily involved in the arms trade. And the official investigation becomes mired in a power struggle between the Paris police and a newly formed national intelligence agency.

Lola and Ingrid have earned their reputation as amateur super sleuths who get the job done when the police can't
- or won't. But the high-stakes world of international arms dealing plays by its own brutal rules, and this case could
prove too hot for them to handle . . .

There is an echo of Chandler's gallant, world-weary Philip Marlowe in grumpy former police commissioner Lola Jost. There is a salute to Agatha Christie in the way the prime suspect is finally confronted and shamed by a chain of evidence pointing to their unequivocal guilt. There is also a strong flavour of Simenon in the way she evokes Paris through the inviting fug of its glowing cafes, after-hours clubs and shady denizens with guilty secrets they are reluctant to share. - Sunday Herald

Dominique Sylvain worked as a journalist in Paris before relocating to Asia where she lived for spells in Japan and Singapore. She is the author of thirteen crime novels and now lives once more in Tokyo where she writes full-time.