Newly-orphaned Anne Beddingfeld is a nice English girl looking for a bit of adventure in London. But adventure finds her when a strange-smelling man falls off an Underground platform and is electrocuted on the rails. Scotland Yard rules the death as accidental, but who was the man in the brown suit who examined the body before running away, leaving a single cryptic clue?

The next day the newspapers report that a beautiful ballet dancer has been found dead there-- brutally strangled. A fabulous fortune in diamonds has vanished. And now, aboard a luxury cruise liner, mysterious strangers pillage her cabin and try to strangle her. What are they looking for? Why should they want her dead?

Anne is the last person on earth suited to solve this mystery... and the only one who can! Anne's journey to unravel the mystery takes her as far afield as Africa and the tension mounts with every step... and Anne finds herself struggling to unmask a faceless killer known only as 'The Colonel'.