Born in Shanghai's International Settlement around the turn of the 20th century, Puffin is the spawn of an officer in a British trading company and an anti-opium activist. Banks' parents' marriage is strained from his mother's constant pressure on his father to renounce the company's evil opium trade, a way to gain enormous profits while keeping China's population subjugated. Orphans' One day Puffin's Papa goes out to work and never comes back. Not long afterward, Mama disappears, too. Shocked and grief-stricken, the youngster convinces himself his parents have been kidnapped.
Banks goes to live with an aunt in England.
Miraculously, he survives to adulthood without anyone braining him with a brick. He becomes a detective and gains some renown. He finds himself enmeshed in a social circle of bright young things and has a few strange encounters with an accomplishment junkie named Sarah. Ishiguro lards his prose with clues hinting at the reality behind Banks' sophistry. Plot twists strain credulity, loose ends dangle, and jump-cuts between realism and surrealism shred one's patience.