ies, Paris detective Henri Lefort, must solve a complex case when a man is murdered on the policeman's own doorstep.

January 1941: It's cold and still dark when Paris Detective Henri Lefort wakes up to an empty apartment, irritated with his roommate for not even starting the coffee.

Irritation turns to suspicion when he starts his walk to work and spots a large blood stain in front of the building. At the office his boss, chief of homicide, is incredulous that Henri didn't hear the gunshot that killed a man right outside his apartment. On the plus side, this means that Henri isn't a witness and can investigate the case.

It first appears that the dead man is a nobody--but Henri soon finds out he's a nobody with a classified police file. Henri confronts his bosses and then the Germans, but is stonewalled. So he turns his investigation to the other tenants in his building. Coincidentally, each resident claims ignorance. When Henri learns that the dead man was a German agent, he must face the real possibility that one of his friends and neighbors is a killer. It's his job to find the truth no matter what, but when he does he faces the biggest dilemma of his career--whether in times like these the rules of justice should be, just sometimes, trumped by the rules of war.