When two theater friends are murdered backstage at a Kennedy Center performance, Jim Brodie is devastated --- and determined to hunt down the killer. The First Lady was the college roommate of one of the victims, and she enlists Brodie to track down the assassin. Brodie flies to Tokyo to attend the second of two funerals, when his friend’s daughter Anna is kidnapped during the ceremony. It is at this point that he realizes the murders were simply bait to draw her out of hiding. Anna, it seems, is the key architect of a top-secret NSA program that gathers the personal secrets of America’s most influential leaders --- secrets so damaging that North Korea and China will stop at nothing to get them.

In recognition for his role in solving the Japantown murders in San Francisco, antiques dealer and sometime-PI Jim Brodie has just been brought on as the liaison for the mayor’s new Pacific Rim Friendship Program. He recruits his friend, the renowned Japanese artist Ken Nobuki, who ends up being shot by a sniper and lies comatose in the hospital. Brodie soon realizes that, with the suspicious and untimely death of Nobuki’s oldest son a week earlier in Napa Valley, someone may be targeting his friend’s family --- and killing them off one by one.

When an elderly World War II veteran shows up unannounced at Brodie Security begging for protection, Jim Brodie --- in Tokyo to hunt down a rare ink painting for a client --- agrees to provide a security detail until the man comes to his senses. Instead, a brutal murder rocks Brodie and his crew, sending them deep into the realm of the Triads, Chinese spies, kendo warriors, and an elusive group of killers whose treachery spans centuries --- and who will stop at nothing to complete their mission.

In Barry Lancet’s debut thriller, readers are introduced to Jim Brodie, an American antique dealer-turned-reluctant-private eye who must use his knowledge of Japanese culture to unravel a major murder in San Francisco --- even as he and his daughter, Jenny, become targets for the same mysterious killer.