When Claire Fleetwood, a young American forensic photographer, inherits a large house and garden in London's East End from relatives she never knew she had, she imagines it will be a slice of the English dream. But after the brutal murder of her best friend Sally Rivers, Claire learns that her inheritance involves more than she wanted or bargained for. Claire joins a scientific expedition led by her cousin Jack Ironstone, one of the men she suspects of being responsible for Sally's murder. Her journey leads from Jack the Ripper's Whitechapel to the Fleetwoods' murky roots in India's opium trade and the wild 'paradise' valleys of Tibet. It parallels a route taken during Britain's great 19th-century triangulation of the Himalayas by Claire's distant relative Magda Ironstone and a mysterious Indian botanist. As Claire reconstructs a triangular love affair she imagines took place, the contemporary story is overtaken to deadly effect by Magda's.
- ISBN10 0753811391
- ISBN13 9780753811399
- Publish Date 7 June 2001 (first published 24 August 2000)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 15 June 2006
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Orion Publishing Co
- Imprint Phoenix (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd )
- Edition New edition
- Format Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
- Pages 368
- Language English