When a knife-wielding thug shatters a shy young Asian woman's lunch break with a vicious attack on her dog Bromo Perkins, lover of Lagavulin and double espressos, returns to the mean streets of Richmond. By next morning the woman is found brutally murdered, her body revealed as the hiding place for a clutch of illegal diamonds. The gruesome murder lures disgraced secret service agent Bromo Perkins from his would-be reclusive life in an Australian inner-city suburb and opens old wounds from a dangerous mission to Sri Lanka. Mugged and threatened, he is soon dragged back into the murky world of his past as he becomes involved with a group of mercenaries, a sex-crazed businesswoman and the dark and murderous international trade in blood diamonds. The trail of deceit and duplicity leads him to England's remote southwest where threats from an enigmatic tycoon to his daughter's life persuade him to connive in an explosive climax that rocks the back streets of his beloved Richmond.