When a maid finds the nude corpse of a Western female in a suite in Singapore's Marriott Hotel, all hell breaks loose.
After being fatally shot, the victim's face was bludgeoned so severely as to render it unrecognizable. Inspector Samuel Tay, Singapore's veteran homicide investigator, didn't really want to view the scene of the crime; even after long years of experience, the sight of murder victims still nauseates him.
From the fingerprints, the corpse is identified as Elizabeth Munson, wife of the American Ambassador to Singapore. But then at this point, Tay's investigation runs up against a brick wall: In the post-9/11 world, it seems, any crime against U.S. government employees or their families is automatically treated as an act of terrorism.