Europe: 1938. Nicholas Morath works in a Paris advertising agency. He also undertakes various missions for his uncle, a powerful, rather shadowy figure. Morath is sent to Czechoslovakia to help a marooned political activist to escape; to the Sudetenland, where he is shown the formidable Czech defences as part of a complicated plan to stiffen Allied resolve against the Nazis; and to Roumania, to raise funds for Hungarian freedom parties. He is also trying to lead a normal life among the attractions and temptations of Paris . . . Kingdom of Shadows ranges from Paris in the west to Russia in the east, and confirms Furst's standing as the leading contemporary novelist of espionage and war.