Haunted by memories of a past infused with exotic scents, Jac L'Etoile, the heir to a French perfume company, is hurtled into a nightmare when her brother goes missing after making a profound discovery about the family's possession of a mystical fragrance.

In 1738 in Paris, a baby is born under a fishmonger's bloody table in a marketplace and abandoned. Orphaned, passed over to the monks as a charity case, already there is something about the tiny infant that is unsettling. No one will look after him; he is somehow too demanding and, even more disturbing, something is missing: he doesn't smell the way a baby should; indeed, he has no scent at all. Yet Jean-Baptiste Grenouille clings stubbornly to life,...