Cosmo Latham is a young Englishman travelling in Italy. The year is 1815, Napoleon is exiled on Elba, and the Congress of Vienna is still in session. Hoping to glimpse the exiled emperor himself, Cosmo arrives in Genoa, where he finds both political intrigue and a young woman—the Countess de Montevesso, whom he had known in England as Adèle d’Armand, and who is now unhappily married.

Suspense is Conrad’s final, unfinished novel, published posthumously in 1925 by Richard Curle, Conrad’s executor and close friend. The plot is partially based on the memoirs of Adèle d’Osmond, Comtesse de Boigne, and the idea for the book had been on Conrad’s mind for many years; he even visited Corsica to gather writing material.