Singapore/Malaya, 1892: Chief Detective Inspector David Hawksworth, orphaned, middle-aged and gimlet-eyed, travels to Malacca to meet a mysterious woman who claims his mother is alive, only to find a British Resident has been brutally murdered and a Singapore police expedition has vanished in the jungle. Children are being snatched from villages, sinister commercial syndicates are fighting over virgin resources, and a seductive vampiric pontanak is on the loose. When native kids start turning up butchered in Singapore, Hawksworth finds himself increasingly isolated as the evidence points to the involvement of the colonial elite...