Eric Foster’s dream of becoming a master perfumer turns to nightmare when police accuse him of making a fragrance that drives people to kill.

While a student at the top perfume school in France, Eric creates a perfume he calls Balquees, a formulation based on the fragrance the Queen of Sheba wore to seduce King Solomon.  Upon testing it surreptitiously at a gathering of glitterati in the Pantheon in Paris, he discovers it works better than he ever imagined.  Balquees is a true aphrodisiac, the holy grail of perfumery.  He sees fame and fortune on his horizon.  But the school’s sample of Yemeni oud, a rare ingredient critical to his creation, has been stolen.  The school board blames Eric and expels him.

Blackballed from the major perfume houses, Eric now slogs through a mind-numbing job with a New York manufacturer of scent additives for supermarket products.  His one pleasure comes from moonlighting as a forensic smell expert for the NYPD.   Police call in Eric when a perfume named SF surfaces as the only link in a series of passion-driven homicides.  He instantly recognizes SF as a knockoff of Balquees.  Furious and horrified that his formula was stolen and possibly led to fatalities, he declares SF to be a counterfeit.  The police think he’s lying.  Before they can charge him with serial murder, he flees New York to hunt down the real culprit.

Eric’s search takes him to Yemen and France and makes him doubt every fried he ever had.

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