Paris, 1899.
The city is electric with excitement. Preparations for the universal exhibition and the dawn of a new century have hit fever pitch. But the sensual spectacle of the belle epoque is overshadowed by racial and social tensions, as the Dreyfus affair unleashes a riotous surge of anti-semitism into its midst.
Enter James Norton, an American charged with bringing home his brother Raf and their high-spirited sister Ellie. When the body of the beautiful Jewish woman Raf turns up in the Seine, and her sister is discovered in the sprawling Salptrire asylum, the siblings are drawn into a dark web of violence, madness and death.
As James reluctantly tackles his mission, it emerges that he and Paris share a history - one that is not altogether unlinked to the turbulent present that now confronts him...
