Months before the start of the Pacific War in 1941, John Reeves - his career and marriage failing - is posted as British consul to the tiny Portuguese colony of Macao in southern China.
The Japanese soon declare war on the West with their attacks on Pearl Harbor and Hong Kong. But because Portugal is neutral, Macao is left alone and becomes a tiny island of neutrality, an Asian Casablanca surrounded by Japanese-occupied China.
Reeves, a lonely...