March 1973: After the dissolution of the French Connection, a bloody gang war rages in Marseille over the succession of Mafia boss Antoine Guérini. In this heated atmosphere, the dynamic businessman Maxime Piéri is executed in front of the Casino in Nice with ten bullets. The hero of the Resistance, formerly the right-hand man of the Guérini brothers and then converted into a freight shipowner, seems to have succumbed to his Mafia past. At least, that is the preferred version of the police and justice system, which shows no interest in a genuine investigation. The inexperienced Commissioner Théodore Daquin, who is taking up his first post in Marseille, is assigned to the case. He uncovers dubious activities involving Piéri's freighters in the Mediterranean, which apparently transport more than just ore and grain. In collaboration with an anonymous partner, the shipowner seems to be gearing up to enter a fiercely contested new business field. Daquin has exactly fifteen days, as part of an expedited procedure for his investigation, to navigate the labyrinth of local secrets, the shipping business, and international financial circuits. It is a Herculean task in the face of an opaque situation and a threatening city that is foreign to him. In her latest novel, Dominique Manotti sends her protagonist Théo Daquin into his past - into a case that encompasses not only all the underground networks of Marseille and Nice but also the obscure world of oil trading. The economic historian masterfully crafts the gigantic economic and geopolitical fresco of a highly complex era that already hints at the face of the 21st century.