When expatriate novelist Anthony Holton, living away from the Los Angeles rat race in a peaceful house overlooking a klong in Bangkok, hears that his best friend, well-known film actor Jake McKay, has gone missing in Hong Kong along with his pride and joy, a sleek racing yacht called The Hong Kong Lady, he is on the next plane, trying to help. Jake is that kind of friend.

What Holton finds is a collection of bizarre and scary people, including a fugitive diamond smuggler, the godfather of a feared Chinese triad, a young Chinese billionaire who wants to produce a movie, and an American soldier of fortune who knows every way there is of killing a man.

Distracted by his attraction to Jake's roommate, the mysterious Kate Longley, Holton finds himself over his head in international smuggling---and violent death.