Nineteen sixty-eight is a time of great change in Los Angeles with Civil Rights, the oral contraceptive pill and Rock and Roll. But more than anything, it is the Vietnam War that is blowing generations apart. A retired private detective with something on his mind gets suckered into a job that leaves him wishing he'd closed shop a decade before. Caught up in the shady world of secret programs designed to destabilise the Viet Cong, he finds his old-world detective skills are no match for a CIA-trained killer who seems determined to reap some sort of revenge. But revenge for what? And, behind the killings there seems to be another motive. But what is it, and who is perpetrating it? Nothing is what it seems. The case appears as meaningless as some would say the Vietnam War is as it threatens to blow up in the face of the US government. And at the same time, he is not immune from the inexorable ticking fuse on his own time-bomb.