At the age of thirteen, Miles Malan witnesses a horrifying fatal accident, which will never fade from his memory. Ten years later, in an old trunk in a street market, Milo, as he now likes to be called, catches sight of a photograph that takes him back to that tragic day - and will plunge him into an extraordinary story. Going through the contents of the trunk, Milo begins to piece together the life-story of its owner Max Owen, from the extravagant Thirties in Monaco and St Moritz, through the Second World War, to the shady underworld of post-world London.