Set in the untamed wilds of the nineteenth-century colonial India, a dazzling historical thriller introducing an unforgettable investigative pair. India, 1837: William Avery is a young solider with few prospects except rotting away in campaigns in India; Jeremiah Blake is a secret political agent gone native, a genius at languages and disguises, disenchanted with the whole ethos of British rule, but who cannot resist the challenge of an unresolved mystery. What starts as a wild goose chase for this unlikely pair-trying to track down a missing writer who lifts the lid on Calcutta society-becomes very much more sinister as Blake and Avery get sucked into the mysterious Thuggee cult its even more ominous suppression.