Rick van Lam is bui doi, "a child of dust," as the Vietnamese scornfully called a mixed-blood kid whose father was an unknown American GI. Rick’s made a life in Hartford, Connecticut, as a private eye after leaving a career as a cop at the NYPD. Rick is also teaching a part-time course at Farmington College where brainy Vietnamese student Dustin Trang, a scholarship student with no social skills and an oddly hostile family, is scorned and bullied. One night as a blizzard strikes, a professor is shot down in the campus parking lot. Dustin is everyone's hot suspect for the murder, but Rick believes the boy is innocent. As the investigation stalls and the cops close in, Rick realizes he has to break though a web of lies, anger, and betrayals, and force Justin to reveal whatever it is he fears more than arrest for murder.

PI Rick Van Lam’s Vietnam-vet mentor and partner, Jimmy, and Jimmy’s old army pal, Ralph, are attacked as they walk down a city sidewalk. Ralph is killed, and Jimmy is struck by a car. While the battered Jimmy is under the care of Rick’s landlord and friend, Gracie, Rick finds himself in a quandary: He’s asked to clear the name of the two attackers named by the police. One is a boy named Simon Tran, known as Saigon; the other is Simon’s buddy, Frankie Croix. Working with Hank Nguyen, a young colleague who is now a state-cop-in-training, Rick tracks Simon to a Vietnamese gang in Little Saigon. How can he not strive to save Simon and Frankie, who refuse to be saved?