Billy Boyle accompanies Major Samuel Harding with the first Allied forces landing in Algeria during Operation Torch. Their official task is to help negotiate the surrender of Vichy French troops, but rivalries among the regular army, local militia and Charles de Gaulle’s Free French make every agreement unstable.
When medical supplies are diverted into the Algiers black market and a series of murders follows, Billy uncovers a network profiting from both sides of the conflict. His investigation becomes inseparable from an attempt to rescue Diana Seaton, a captured British agent, forcing him to move through the Casbah while the Allied foothold in North Africa remains precarious.
