Paris. A young lawyer is found murdered, tortured by fire, burned alive with a flaming tyre around his neck.
For Lola Jost, retired police commissioner, the killer's cruel methods are all too familiar. Her beloved assistant, Toussaint Kidjo, was murdered in the same agonising manner five years before.
Aided by her loyal sidekick, Ingrid Diesel, an American masseur who moonlights as a striptease artist, Lola reopens her old investigation on the sly.
But the murdered lawyer was the
prot g of one Richard Gratien, known as "Mister Africa", who is heavily involved with the arms trade to Africa, and the case - already explosive - is drawn into a power struggle between Lola's former colleagues in the Paris police and a new national intelligence agency.
Lola and Ingrid have earned a reputation as amateur super sleuths, for getting the job done when the police can't - or won't.
But a high-profile case like this could prove too hot for them to handle . . .