The Second Secretary of the embassy in Istanbul has died in decidedly strange circumstances while attempting to swim the Dardanelles Straits, the passage between Europe and Asia, heavily used by warships, liners, tankers and cargo vessels of all kinds. A romantic attempt to repeat the legendary feat of Leander, as the embassy claims? Or an attempt to spy out a possible landing place for a British military expedition, as the Turks insist? Whichever, Cunningham has ended up with a bullet in his head. The suspicious circumstances of his death have to be investigated so the Foreign Office sends out an officer of the Special Branch: Seymour. Istanbul is an interesting place in 1911. It is of course famously the place where East meets West, a matter of some significance as the old Ottoman Empire crumbles and, in the run-up to possible war, the Great Powers circle for the kill. Very soon Seymour comes to suspect that Cunningham may have been swimming in deeper waters than the Dardanelles. As Seymour tries to untangle the threads of the case, their ends lead him all around this exotic city, from the little coffee shops of the Avenue of Slippers to Les Petits Champs des Morts, where fashionable Turkish ladies loiter among the tombs to eat sweets; from the crowded coffee houses around the Galata Bridge where men sit all day smoking bubble pipes, to the heart of the Topkapi Palace itself.