Wealthy media mogul Ray Fisher dies after an accident on one of his private jet trips. Fisher's cause of death is recorded as a plane crash.       Ray Fisher's daughter, Kyla, is convinced that her father was murdered, even though there is no apparent reason to do so. He convinces Major Boris Pavlov to investigate the case. It soon becomes clear that the case is much more complicated than it seems. Major Pavlov asks his friend Prof. Simon Blake for help.        As Prof. Blake grapples with his personal problems, he manages to unravel a chain of events that leads to international child trafficking and illicit drug production, one arm to the Fisher family's mysterious scandalous past, and one arm to spontaneous combustion, a phenomenon that no one has been able to explain for centuries.