3 Review(s)

Le Rayol, France, July 1935: Tom Wyndham, a former British Secret Intelligence Service operative, has left the horror of the past behind him. A year after the Bolshevik coup, with the Red Terror in full swing, the woman he loved was arrested. A daring rescue attempt was botched after he was betrayed and she was executed, carrying his unborn child. On the run, with a price on his head, Tom exacted deadly revenge against the traitor of the rescue mission. That all seems a world away from his sun-drenched home on the poor-man′s end of the Riviera, where white-sand coves are strung out along the rocky coastline like pearls on a necklace. Staying with Tom, as they do every summer, are Leonard Braithwaite (his former SIS boss) and his wife Venetia. The community here comes to life only in the summer months. People from all over Europe arrive, a rag-tag crowd of authors, journalists and artists - some exiled from the recent political upheavals in Russia and Germany. It is 1935: dark clouds are gathering on the horizon, it is a time of doubt and mutual mistrust. And Tom′s summer idyll is shattered when someone tries to murder him while he sleeps... After dispatching the assassin, Tom′s investigation reveals that a number of the summer residents in Rayol are not what they seem. Worryingly, Tom believes even Leonard can′t be trusted anymore and, consumed by suspicion, he tries to resist becoming the man he once was - the monster he left behind...