1976 Successful novelist Mike Ward has had enough of England and decides to live abroad for a couple of years - to sever himself from his troubles and to write a new book. Yet when he gets to his chosen paradise in the middle of the Indian Ocean, he finds himself drawn into a web of deceit and into the arms of the beautiful Rose Trelawney. His instincts, built up after years spent in journalism, leave him unable to stop himself digging into the affairs that haunt the High Commissioner and his wife. As he searches, he is thrust into the heart of a Communist uprising, the seeds of which lay in the dark past of the High Commissioner himself.Against his better judgment, Ward is sucked into the dangerous worlds of love and politics and the question becomes not just one of survival, but a fight to remain sane in a world of madness.