On a stormy London night, journalist Jack Halliday helps a young constable check the garage of an empty house. Inside is a wooden shipping crate marked with a strange green cat.

By morning, the crate has turned up at Limehouse Dock.

Inside it is the body of Sir Marcus Mountfort.

Beside the corpse is an ancient Egyptian votive figure of Bast, the cat-headed goddess of Bubastis — protector, enchantress, and, in her darker aspect, a predator who plays with her victim before striking.

For Jack, the murder is more than a professional curiosity. Sir Marcus’s death makes Eric Mountfort the new baronet, and Eric is engaged to Isobel Lytton, the woman Jack has never stopped loving. Worse still, Sir Marcus had been pursuing Isobel, Eric had quarrelled with him, and now Eric refuses to say where he was on the night of the murder.

Detective Chief Inspector Harding sees an elegant trap. The Red House was rented anonymously. A supper was laid for two. Isobel’s photograph was placed where police would be sure to find it. Every call, every payment, every movement was arranged by a woman no one can identify.

Then Jack sees the eyes again.

Green. Luminous. Watching from the dark.

As the case leads from London theatres to the Mountfort family estate and the hidden laboratory of Dr. Lucian Sarn, Jack uncovers a secret rooted in Egypt, inheritance, obsession, and the terrifying possibility that an ancient goddess has taken human form.

Sir Marcus was not merely murdered.

He was played with.

And Isobel may be next.