<p><b>There are two men on their way to Brussels from the UK: Neil Bannerman, an iconoclastic journalist for Scotland's <i>Daily Standard </i>whose irate editor wants him out of the way, and Kale&#8212;a professional assassin.</b><p><b><br></b><p>A classic early Peter May novel situated among the political intrigue of 1979. Expecting to find only a difficult, dreary political investigation in Belgium, Bannerman has barely settled in when tragedy strikes. His host, a fellow journalist, along with a British Cabinet minister, are discovered dead in the minister's elegant Brussels townhouse. <p><br><p>It appears that they have shot each other. But the dead journalist's young autistic daughter, Tania, was hidden in a closet during the killings, and when she draws a chilling picture of a third party&#8212;a man with no face&#8212;Bannerman suddenly finds himself a reluctant participant in a desperate murder investigation.<br>As the facts slowly begin to emerge under Bannerman's scrutiny, he comes to suspect that the shootings may have a deep and foul link with the rotten politics that brought him to Brussels in the first place. <p><br><p>And as Kale threatens to strike again, Bannerman begins to feel a change within himself. His jaded professionalism is transforming into a growing concern for the lonely and frightened Tania, and a strong attraction to a courageous woman named Sally&#8212;drawing him out of himself and into the very heart of a profound, cold-blooded, and infinitely dangerous conspiracy.<br> <p><br><p><b>"Peter May is a writer I'd follow to the ends of the earth." &#8212;Marilyn Stasio, <i>New York Times</i></b>