Early twentieth-century Singapore is a location in which a person can disappear, and Harriet Gordon hopes to make a new lease of life for herself presently there, leaving her tragic memories in back of her–but murder gets in the way.

Singapore, 1910–Desperate for a fresh start, Harriet Gordon sees herself living with her sibling, a reverend and headmaster of a school for males, in Singapore at the height of colonial rule. Hoping to get some financial independence, she advertises her solutions as a personal secretary. It about Singapore Sapphire is usually unlucky that she should discover her first client, Sir Oswald Newbold–explorer, mine magnate and chief executive of the distinctive Explorers and Geographers Club–dead having a blade in his neck.

When Inspector Robert Curran is put on the situation, he realizes that he has an unusual witness in Harriet. Harriet’s enthusiastic eye for details and strong sense of duty interests him, as does her distrust of the authorities and her distressing past, which she is at aches to keep secret from your gossips of Singapore society.

When another body is dragged from the canal, Harriet feels compelled to help using the case. She and Curran are quickly drawn into a murderous internet of treachery and deceit and find themselves face-to-face using a ruthless cabal that has no qualms about killing again to protect its secrets.