In this international thriller from the author of Epitaph for a Spy, a freelance writer is offered a deadly job he can't refuse.

Robert Halliday is an ordinary writer-for-hire until he receives a bomb threat in the mail. When the bomb arrives as promised, it is accompanied by an offer of employment from international fixer Karliss Zander. Unless Halliday agrees to help him edit the memoirs of a nineteenth-century Russian terrorist, Zander will detonate the bomb.

Preferring not to test Zander's resolve, Halliday takes the job. But he soon discovers his new employer requires more than his eye for grammar and punctuation. Tangled in an international web of danger, Halliday begins to wonder if he'd have been better off letting the bomb explode.