A "clinic" designed to cater lavishly for multiple perversions - that's the set-up which the enigmatic Monsieur Datt operates in Paris's Avenue Foch. Equipped with devices ranging from an Iron Maiden to mind-bending psychedelic truth-drugs, staffed by a group of intellectually and sexually high-powered girls. Datt's pleasuredrome has a hidden purpose: to compile "research" dossiers of tape and film on influential political clients from East and West. Into this twilight half-world of blackmail, decadence and hidden motives come the agents of two Super-Powers - and of two powers-that-were. Perhaps they're after Datt's pornographic dossiers. Or perhaps their purpose is altogether more deadly than a trip to the blue movies...

An Expensive Place to Die moves far beyond the limits of the orthodox spy-thriller to explore human confrontation and conflict in depth. Yet the true Deighton excitement and nerve-stretching suspense are present as always - right up to the terrifying climax.