New Zealand 1997. As a serial killer traumatises the country, Caspian is re-evaluating his career. Science has been his life, but an unorthodox approach to problem solving is out of favour with the new corporate ethos that sees science as a business. There are other pressures too as Caspian's beautiful French wife, Marie-Claire, is becoming increasingly disenchanted with life at a remote beach on Maori tribal lands, an environment and lifestyle that Caspian is reluctant to give up. But when the body of a colleague is washed up on the sand and another, Robert, is arrested on suspicion of murder, nothing can ever be quite the same again. As he seeks to help his Maori detective friend establish Robert's innocence, Caspian stumbles across a scam involving illegal genetic engineering experiments with a money trail leading to an international pharmaceutical company. As the suspense grows, the dirty underbelly of science for profit is revealed as a culture of corruption where the truth no longer holds any currency.