In this devilishly well-crafted crime novel, neither the guilty nor the innocent are quite what they seem. Political-legal scandals intertwine in a way reminiscent of those thousand-piece puzzles that superintendent Lola Jost is fond of. She will have to piece this one together time and again before being able to make out the whole picture...

In 1998, an attack took place against the French company Aerolix, located in Damas. At the funeral ceremony, the daughter of one of the victims refuses the official decoration awarded to her father by the President of the Republic, and demands that someone be held to account.

In Paris, Sacha Duguin is accused of the murder of her superior : the chief superintendent Arnaud Mars who had dabbled in insider influence linked to arms contracts and suspicious retro commissioning processes in Africa.

To exonerate Sacha, Lola Jost, the retired superintendent, takes up her functions again. She is soon assisted by her inseparable American sidekick, Ingrid Diesel, who comes to the rescue from Las Vegas where she has been demonstrating her unparalleled talents in dance and strip-tease.

But the road that will take them from the "Mars case" to the Aerolix attack is long : from Abidjan, the clues surrounding Mars take them to Brittany, where Aerolix has a plant, via Hong Kong.

In the background of these two cases is the lightning career of President Borel magnificently orchestrated by his charismatic communication adviser, Gildas and his faithful, Mondo ; the equally dizzying fall of his political opponent, Candichard, who committed suicide leaving behin an inconsolable wife and son ; and the inquiries of a young judge who breaks the political omertà, preventing the cases from being settled.