The greatest tragedy of Queen Victoria's reign... ...was the fate of over 100 women and children who were hacked to pieces with meat cleavers by the rebel forces of the Great Mutiny. Henry Booth remembers his early childhood in India and knows his mother was one of the victims of the infamous Cawnpore massacre. He has spent a quiet life in England trying to recover from the the nightmare of her death. But when Henry suddenly receives his mother's diary from Calcutta and learns the truths that it lays bare, everything the young Englishman believes is called into question. Pursued by the past, Henry goes from being a respectable Oxford student to being a hunted murderer, chased by police and a deadly cult of killers who want the secrets that lie hidden in his mother's diary. Along the way Henry falls in love with an Indian courtesan and is caught up in the Great Game, the power struggle between the British and Russian empires, the superpowers of the Victorian age. Henry must take sides and his life will never be the same. No matter what choice he makes, he will have to betray those closest to him.