When Joe dies, his brother Jack thinks it's an accident . . . until the parcel arrives with Joe's diaries and notebooks, and the map of the cabin high up in the Appalachians where Joe's war buddy, Wash, is hiding out with a girl he's kidnapped -- just the latest in a long line of girls. Joe has one last favour to ask of his brother. He wants Jack to rescue the girl and -- if he has to -- kill Wash too. So starts a complex and intense tale that involves a journey back to Vietnam and into the dark past: a past where Clausewitz, the philosopher of war, meets de Sade, the philosopher of man's own individual evil. But there are too the incendiary eyes of innocent judgement. And there is love -- and love is complicated.