Former army homicide investigator Paul Brenner has just gotten used to the early retirement forced on him after the disastrous end of his last case when his old commanding officer asks him to return for one final mission: investigate a murder that took place in wartime Vietnam thirty years before. Brenner reluctantly accepts out of curiosity and loyalt, and maybe a touch of boredom. He won't be bored for long.

Back in Vietnam, Brenner meets expatriate Susan Weber, a woman as exotic, sensual, and dangerous as the nation of her voluntary exile. Here he's plunged into a world of corruption, lethal double cross, and haunted memories-as he's suddenly thrust back into a war that neither Brenner nor his country ever really stopped fighting.