Why would a Paris cosmetics house need the advice of art investment specialist Tim Simpson? And why is White's Bank so anxious to send him to help them? A suspicious Tim finds himself drawn into the internal politics of the Bellevie company and the cross-Channel power struggle inside White's and Maucourt Frères, their Parisian colleagues, as a series of accidental deaths starts to get closer to him. The life of nineteenth- century artist James Tissot provides a fascinating sideline for Tim to pursue when he travels to Nantes, where Bellevie has a factory. Tim's foray from London to Paris and Nantes provides an entirely new, murderous twist to the challenge of Europe in 1992.