When a New York dealer in gemstones discovers a number of top quality synthetic diamonds in a batch he has bought, industry watchdog, the Federation of International Diamond Traders calls in Belizean, Carter Jefferson to trace their origin. Carter, a synthetic diamond specialist who recently quit working for the FIDT to concentrate on writing but still works for them on an ad-hoc basis, is reluctant to take the case until he finds a reference in the file which takes him back 25 years to the time he was a geology student at Oxford University. Old relationships are revived and family secrets emerge as an attractive English girl and a passionate young Frenchman are sucked into the web of deceit and death surrounding the illicit gems