Marie-Claire Bernard was the widow of a national hero and the daughter of a wealthy, politically powerful family and her murder threatened domestic consequences for the French Government. Eager to avoid uproar in the press, the Minister of Justice summons Gérard de Montclaire –the most renowned detective of the era—to assume a familiar role. Examining Magistrate, with sweeping powers to find and prosecute the killer. Montclaire soon learns that Marie-Claire was in possession of three rare and priceless porcelain bowls of the Tang Dynasty. The legendary bowls—called The Tears of Buddha -- are now missing. A motive for murder? Soon, however, what seems to be a clear case of criminal murder and theft is overturned by developments that take Montclaire into the bizarre world of criminal syndicates, espionage, code-breaking and the German Kaiser’s boundless ambitions and hatred of France. Following every thread of through a complicated skene of evidence and even surviving a savage attack, Montclaire ultimately sets a clever trap that ensnares Marie Claire’s killer. But, at the moment of his victory the French Government descends upon his case and for reasons of state denies him the ultimate victory – a conviction. Everything seemed to rest for several years at an unsatisfactory conclusion, until that is one day an odd newspaper article about a murder in Milan suggests an end to the story of Marie Claire’s murder and the missing Tears of Buddha.