Chapman Bouttell, an Australian homicide detective, is drawn violently back into a conspiracy he thought he’d escaped while serving in the Vietnam War when members of his former army unit were found murdered.
Bouttell, near retirement from the Australian Southern Territory Police Force, is summoned to the scene of an apparently motiveless murder in an Adelaide park. He recognizes the victim as another member of the off-the-books covert action unit to which Bouttell had been assigned in Vietnam. His investigation leads to the discovery of the murders of his former fellow soldiers, and Bouttell himself is soon fleeing the agents of “The Coterie,” a rogue intelligence organization.