“Edward” Lu Hao has disappeared along with his bookkeeping of bribes he’d been paying out for an American multinational operating in Shanghai, China. The woman who’d helped Eddy win the job, Grace Chu, contracts out as a forensic accountant for an international security firm. Because of her connections, and her involvement, Grace is tasked with vetting the accounting of the multinational and finding Edward Lu’s missing books.
John Knox, an import/export entrepreneur with friends in the same security company is recruited as a Shanghai insider to deliver the ransom and/or extract the hostage. But the China Knox knows so well is not the China he finds himself in. Immersed in a city of twenty million, with twenty million stories and twenty million motives, Knox and Grace team up to try to free multiple hostages, whatever the risk.
The stakes mount as fast as the lies. Dead ends are as common as hand carts on a Shanghai morning. With no one to trust, and nowhere to turn, Knox and Grace face unexpected hardship and unimagined enemies, with the “solution” anything but certain.
