This story is set in India, 1946. Ross Monroe is a boxer, a Catholic, an Anglo-Indian - part of the race that runs the administrative side of the Empire for the English. Light enough in skin to join the RAF during the war, after being demobbed he took up a post in the Indian railway, all the while knowing that boxing would take him to the next Olympics, and then to England and a career as a professional. Until a man called Skinner robs him first of his money, in a scam in the marketplace, and then of his identity, in the ring. In England, 2005, Owen Monroe thinks he has a lead on where Skinner is now - a novel he's found which tells the story of a young boxer, a Catholic, an Anglo-Indian, who works for the railways...