In London, Jim Beauregard, a young manager at an import trading firm is having problems with shipments coming from mainland Chinese factories. In Hong Kong, Theo Scrimple, a washed-up expatriate police inspector, is alerted to a murder plot by a bar-girl who then turns up dead. Although it's not his case, he tries to investigate. Inadvertently the two protagonists begin unravelling an ambitious conspiracy of Chinese businessmen and generals that could change the entire political map of Asia.

Scrimple, a former Hong Kong police inspector, is enjoying his job running the Bangkok office of an English trading firm. Until the day his old boss, Assistant Commissioner Bottle, turns up asking for a favour. Reluctantly Scrimple agrees. All he has to do is buy an apartment for a girl whom he assumes is Bottle's Thai mistress. Bottle even hands him a briefcase full of cash. But when Scrimple goes to view the apartment, he finds a dead body. And soon he is being framed not only for this murder, but four more. The more he ducks, dives and runs, the worse things get for him, until he can think of only one solution. He has to ask for help from a man who scares him more than anyone he has ever met in his life: another former Hong Kong policeman—the Perfect Killer.