Seven Australian soldiers, carousing in Paris in 1918, unknowingly witness a murder, with devastating consequences. Ten years later, two are dead...under very suspicious circumstances. Phryne (pronounced Fry-Knee) Fisher's friends, Bert and Cec (sometimes cabbies and sometimes men for hire), appeal to her for help. They were part of this group of soldiers in 1918, and they fear for their lives and for those of the other three men. It's only as Phryne delves into the investigation that she, too, remembers being in Montparnasse on that very same fatal day.

Meanwhile, her lover, Lin Chung, is about to be married. And the effect this is having on her own usually peaceful household is disastrous....