The knock on the door of struggling art expert Madison Dupre’s low rent New York apartment is that of a Thai café deliveryman—but instead of succulent noodles, he has a rare work of art from the incredible antiquity site of Angkor Wat in the jungles of Cambodia.
Angkor Wat, a wonder of the ancient world, is considered by many antiquity experts to be even more majestic than the monuments of the Egyptian pharaohs. Left unprotected, the vast complex has been a treasure trove for thieves who mercilessly cut off pieces, mutilating thousand year-old sculptures with chainsaws.
Madison knows there is no possibility that this artifact could have been acquired legally. That knock on her door sends her to one of the most dangerous places on the planet: Phnom Penh, the sex-sin-drug capital of the Far East, a place where sex with an underage girl costs less than a pack of cigarettes—and the price of a life is even cheaper.
Stepping into a cauldron of murder and antiquity looting that takes her from New York to Cambodia, Hong Kong to Thailand, Madison keeps one step ahead of temple robbers who kill as easily as they steal. She finds comfort in the arms of a soldier of fortune who “hunts” landmines; tangles with a Russian model and her stud “bodyguard,” who introduce her to the New Eroticism; and gets entangled with a Cambodian prince with sex moves that not even the worldly Madison had tried.
Madison, broke and struggling to recover from her fall from grace with the art trade, is willing to sacrifice everything in order to protect priceless, irreplaceable antiquities that have come down to us over the ages.
Angkor Wat, a wonder of the ancient world, is considered by many antiquity experts to be even more majestic than the monuments of the Egyptian pharaohs. Left unprotected, the vast complex has been a treasure trove for thieves who mercilessly cut off pieces, mutilating thousand year-old sculptures with chainsaws.
Madison knows there is no possibility that this artifact could have been acquired legally. That knock on her door sends her to one of the most dangerous places on the planet: Phnom Penh, the sex-sin-drug capital of the Far East, a place where sex with an underage girl costs less than a pack of cigarettes—and the price of a life is even cheaper.
Stepping into a cauldron of murder and antiquity looting that takes her from New York to Cambodia, Hong Kong to Thailand, Madison keeps one step ahead of temple robbers who kill as easily as they steal. She finds comfort in the arms of a soldier of fortune who “hunts” landmines; tangles with a Russian model and her stud “bodyguard,” who introduce her to the New Eroticism; and gets entangled with a Cambodian prince with sex moves that not even the worldly Madison had tried.
Madison, broke and struggling to recover from her fall from grace with the art trade, is willing to sacrifice everything in order to protect priceless, irreplaceable antiquities that have come down to us over the ages.
