Despite Nick Storey's reservations, London Port Collection are "twinned" with the port of Bordeaux in an EEC project. Nick's counterpart in Bordeaux is equally suspicious, but examination of their trade reveals a lot of medicines and drugs being exported from London to Bordeaux for an international charity called 'Sant? Mondiale', but also many which are supposedly exported to Bilbao which invariably get diverted to Bordeaux. As Nick and his colleagues dig deeper, there seems to be a counterpart to these exports with both import and exports of similar medicines and drugs by a series of linked companies with shady origins. To get hard evidence about what is going on, Nick and Rosemary make an uncomfortable journey by sea to Bilbao. But as fingers start to point at 'Sant? Mondiale', prominent people, including a newspaper magnate, are deployed to attack Nick and Rosemary and their daughters. "Medicine Man" is the nineteenth book in a series of detective stories set in HM Customs & Excise.