Thailand in the late 1950s,and Southeast Asia moves inexorably towards the Vietnam War. In preparation for the war, American, British and Australian agents are moving in. Businessmen, diplomats, aid personnel - entrepreneurs of all kinds - have come to the seedy streets of Bangkok to ply their trades. The newspapers are closed down, the military runs the drug-smuggling and the brothels, and the government rules via the televised firing squad.
Stephen Brasch, a young American lawyer working for the Rockefeller Foundation, comes to Thailand 'to do good' but discovers that 'good' can be interpreted in many ways - some of them fatal. When Brasch blows the whistle on a scandalous plot involving Thai government ministers, British and American businessmen and even the most celebrated US Presidential Candidate of modern times, he finds himself face-to-face with a Prime Minister who is renowned for taking a gun out of his office drawer and using it.