Contemporary Thailand in the late 1950s, as 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, works for the Rockefeller Foundation, who 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 next President of the USA, 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.
