JAIPUR, INDIA. A RUNAWAY FIELD-GUN CRASHES INTO AN ARCHWAY IN THE AMBER FORT DURING THE LAST YEARS OF QUEEN VICTORIA'S REIGN.

The collision reveals a cache of jewels hidden centuries earlier by the Rajput Raja of Amber. Corporal Robertson and three of his comrades quickly spirit a quantity of the precious stones away from their hiding place. A century later the corporal's great-grandson finds references to the rubies in the corporal's diaries. He travels to India to search for the stones: sixteen red rubies and an almost black ruby the size of a hen's egg, and said to be cursed - The Black Heart of the Moghul. But he knew nothing of the Eurasian grandsons of one of those other soldiers, three part-Indians who have long known what was taken and hidden away again by the corporal, but not where. James must forge a fragile alliance with those three, an alliance which can have only one outcome.

Another thriller from the prize-winning author of The Crying Stones.