The extravagantly exciting third installment of the Dee and Lao mystery series
October, 1924. Dee Ren Jie is dead—to all but his inner circle, who know he survived the Battle of the Necropolis Railway. In hiding, he awaits new instructions from the government of Sun Yatsen (and the ghost of Commissioner Lin). Until Dee reappears, his friends return to their own pursuits—Hoong to shopkeeping, Lao to teaching, Jimmy to picking pockets. Feng and her hound, Mei Qiang, make themselves useful in Hoong’s shop and also around Anthony Cartwright’s laboratory.
Niming Cheng arrives in London, sent by the Chinese government ostensibly to investigate Dee’s death but in fact to look into another matter: the disappearance of a shipment of arms sent through back channels from England to China, intended for Sun Yatsen. The British government can’t admit to the existence of the weapons or the deal, but the chaos in China makes it urgent that the shipment be located and, if possible, sent on to its original destination.
Cheng’s daughter, Irene, is being educated in London, and has become completely enamored of the new technologies of voice recording and radio transmission. She’s engaged to a young Chinese man but it’s an arranged match. More and more she’s drawn to Olga Agapova, a student from Russia.
Suddenly both young women are dead—murdered. Are the deaths related to the weapons’ disappearance? How? And who will be next? To investigate, Dee Ren Jie will have to rise from the dead. The search for answers will lead Dee and his friends through the worlds of seances, prizefighting, cutting edge 1924 technology, and many disguises; and they will find themselves ignoring, at their own peril, a warning to the curious.
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