Brian Cahill, a British investment banker, made 16 reasonably uneventful business trips to Bangkok.
On the 17th he came home in a box.
The Thai authorities say he died of natural causes, but there are a lot of pieces missing from their story - such as the fact Brian's body had been hacked open with a meat cleaver. Scotland Yard's Inspector Ian McLean and his associates Sally Chan and Thomas McMillan are dispatched to Thailand to solve the mystery. Their best leads are a dead bar girl and the baby she left behind, but in the dark recesses of the Patpong bar district absolutely nothing is what it seems.