The place is Los Angeles 1991. Maximilian Ophuls is knifed to death on the doorstep of his illegitimate daughter India slaughtered by his Kashmiri driver a mysterious figure who calls himself Shalimar the Clown. The dead man is a World War II Resistance hero a man of formidable intellectual ability and much erotic appeal a former United States ambassador to India and subsequently America's counter-terrorism chief. The murder looks at first like a political assassination but turns out to be passi