But when Cyril's reluctant return to fieldwork goes wrong, he is blackmailed (on somewhat shaky narrative logic) into becoming a double agent for the conservative, fascist One State Party that threatens Amberlough's freedoms. His Casanova is Aristide Makricosta: a man with as many contingency plans as lovers, the darling of Amberlough as a popular cabaret emcee.and also a smuggler and black marketeer. One such officer is Cyril DePaul, who's sworn off fieldwork after a near-death experience left him terrified of torture and doubting his abilities. A tightly woven and diverse cast of spies, criminals, cabaret bohemians, and lovers struggles to save what matters to each of them against a tide of rising fascism and violence in Donnelly's debut novel, set in a vaguely 1920s milieu.Īmberlough City is a place both tolerant and decadent, where the police commissioner herself might watch a transgressive striptease at the city's most fashionable cabaret and where an intelligence officer might relax from classified telegrams via an affair with a flamboyant Casanova.
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