Paris,1899. Capital of the crime passionnel. 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 poque is overshadowed by racial and social tensions, as the Dreyfus affair unleashes a riotous surge of anti-Semitism into its midst enters 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 loves turns up in the Seine, and her sister is discovered I 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.