London. 1926. One war is over, another is beginning, and murder is sealed with a kiss....


At midnight she was ravishing: a tall redhead wearing emeralds and a low-cut dress. An hour later, in her room at the Ritz, she was dead, the jewels torn from her bludgeoned body. Thus begins Barbara Cleverly’s ingenious novel, another masterpiece of suspense from the CWA Golden Dagger Award—winning author.


With the help of a former comrade-at-arms and a society girl turned constable, Scotland Yard Inspector Joe Sandilands enters into the private world of Dame Beatrice Jagow-Joliffe–a hive of state secrets and sexual extravagance.


But as The Dame’s affairs are exposed, the case takes a sudden, strange turn. Because what Sandilands is about to discover are deceptions that go far beyond salacious scandal to betrayals that strike at the heart of a nation . . . and the ruthless heart of a killer.