London 1721. William Spandrel, deeply in debt, is offered a discharge of his liabilities by his principal creditor. In return he must convey a package to a friend of Janssen's de Vries, in Amsterdam. The package delivered, Spandrel narrowly escapes an attempt on his life, only to be accused of murder and realises that he has become a pawn in a game involving many parties.
Robert Goddard takes us to eighteenth-century London, Amsterdam and Rome for a spellbinding mystery involving secret documents, murder and financial scandal.