After returning to a hero's welcome in Magdalen College, the drama of Stockholm behind him, Giles is tormented by doubts.
Was Ahmad Sharif's death in Sorrento really an accident, as the Carabinieri concluded, or was the truth more sinister? Were the two girls with Stephen Salomon at the symposium his latest research fellows, as he claimed, or there for a very different purpose? And what of Fiona's long-held suspicions about their young assistant Aram? Given what she'd just found in her laptop.