Music soars through the night as the Occidental Hotel's ball glitters in full swing. Guests glide across the floor amid the tender fragrance of flowers arranged in a riot of color. Then, in an instant, everything stops—one of the three Plengnakorn sisters crumples to the floor, dead before the panic-stricken eyes of the crowd. And her famous jeweled necklace is gone, stolen. Any guest in the room could be the killer. But how was the victim struck down before so many watching eyes…and what could the motive be? Piang-or, a brilliant young woman newly returned from her studies abroad, and K.K., a blind young violinist from England, find themselves drawn into a murder as intricate as it is steeped in secrets and half-hidden clues. Beneath the beauty of the guests and the grandeur of the setting, danger lies folded in the shadows, and the two must trace every lead to uncover a truth that breaks the heart. A detective novel that unspools its secrets slowly, ingeniously—like a blade drawn across the reader's heart, slow and deliberate, until it runs red. All the while, it draws us down into Thailand in the year 1947: a murky, uncertain age in which no one can be trusted.