Gabe Treloar, a former Los Angeles cop, is on his way to a new job in Ohio when he gets sidetracked into his midwestern hometown of Monticello. After almost thirty years, much of the town is altered, though money and power still rest in the same hands. Gabe rents a room in his childhood home, and there he finds a kindred spirit in his landlady, Edna Tutt. But when Edna is hideously murdered, Gabe is determined to uncover the town's dark secrets and to bring her vicious killers to justice - even if he is a major suspect...

Private detective Gabe Treloar would never have gone to a reunion of his Vietnam unit if there hadn't been a note of incongruous urgency in Mitchell Queen's invitation. He learns why when Queen, now a successful movie producer, tells him that a particular nemesis of theirs has surfaced after disappearing twenty years Martin Starr. Starr was a criminal then; he is still. He has turned up in California and is threatening the actors in Queen's current production, a story set in Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City. Queen is desperate to get Starr out of his life, and so he turns to Gabe for help. Teaming up uncomfortably with the enigmatic private eye Connie Armijo, Gabe follows Starr's trail to 'Nam and to a dramatic climax in the California hills.

Gabe Treloar's boss Carson hands him his most important case ever, when he is asked to find Carson's missing daughter, whom he believes has been led into a life of crime by her boyfriend