A summer spent travelling across America with photojournalist Shade Colby was not photographer Bryan's idea of a dream assignment. But Bryan will have to manage if she wants the cross-country shoot for a book they're both salivating over.

Colombo, 1990. Maali Almeida, war photographer, gambler and closet queen, has woken up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office. His dismembered body is sinking in the Beira Lake and he has no idea who killed him. At a time when scores are settled by death squads, suicide bombers and hired goons, the list of suspects is depressingly long, as the ghouls and ghosts who cluster around him can attest. But even in the afterlife, time is running...