Phantom Line

Cameron is an engineer who never expected to become a policeman. Quietly observant, stubborn and possessed of a dry Scottish wit, he trusts evidence over assumption and has little patience for convenient answers.

Six years after an act of courage in Jaipur changed his life, Cameron finds himself investigating murder in Rangoon as war closes in on Burma.

Beneath the pith helmet and disciplined exterior is a deeply loyal man, more vulnerable than he admits, driven by one defining trait: he cannot leave an unanswered question alone. For Cameron, the rule is simple—evidence first. Always.

Chandravati belongs to a world James Cameron can enter but never truly inhabit. Intelligent, poised and quietly courageous, the Maharani of Jaipur’s Chief Lady-in-Waiting first enters his life beneath a veil, bleeding from a bullet meant for someone else.

Yet Chandravati is no damsel awaiting rescue. Behind the traditions and restrictions of court life is an independent, perceptive woman who understands people almost as instinctively as Cameron understands machines.

To him alone, she becomes Priya—and across six years, distance and unspoken affection, she becomes something more dangerous than a mystery: the one person capable of making James Cameron forget his precious rules.

Inspector Kaung Lin is the kind of detective Cameron cannot easily categorise—and quickly learns not to underestimate. Immaculate, intelligent and quietly formidable, he moves through colonial Rangoon with the measured confidence of a man accustomed to being judged before he speaks.

Where Cameron pushes, Kaung Lin observes; where others see politics, he looks for evidence. Their wary professional relationship gradually becomes a partnership founded on mutual respect, dry humour and trust.

But Kaung Lin is Burmese before he is anything else, and as war approaches, duty becomes painfully complicated. Clever, restrained and strategically impertinent, he may ultimately have to choose between the police force he serves and the country he calls home.