Sequel to 'The Flower Net'.
When Ling Suchee, a peasant woman living deep in the Chinese Interior, finds her daughter hanged, she turns to the one person she can trust - Liu Hulan. Although Hulan now works at the Ministry of Public Security in Beijing, they lived on the same commune during the Cultural Revolution, and Suchee knows that Hulan will help her if she can. And Suchee is in need of serious help because the target of her investigation is her daughter's employer; the mighty Knight International factory, owned by Americans, but in virtual control of the region.
A continent away, David Stark has failed to persuade Hulan to emigrate, with their unborn child, to America, so when he is offered a transfer to Beijing he is sorely tempted. When a close friend, also working for Knight International, is gunned down in the street, his decision is made . . .