This is the story of a retired detective named John Clarke, who is from the Southern California area and retires to what he thinks is a quiet and peaceful spot on the shores of Northern California, only to find, one day while walking on the beach, the body of a young Chinese girl floating in the surf. Her clothing doesn't seem to match the surroundings; she has the clothing of a peasant from China and no form of identification and some very nasty-looking bruise marks on her neck. The story goes from the quiet little backwater community of Salmon Fork on the coast in Northern California, to the dark and mysterious back alleys of Hong Kong, Sandpan Alley, and Shanghai, to the notorious black market in drug trafficking on the Asian continent, to the slave trading of human beings for profit.