It may have changed its name, but the KGB is up to its old tricks, only this time with a new puppet-the American Public!

Steve Nguyen, a newly minted homicide detective with the San Francisco Police Department, is cut loose on his first solo case-the mysterious death of a young accountant with a public-interest foundation. Everything points to natural causes, but Nguyen, to the dismay of his chief, isn't ready to close the book. With no motive, means, or opportunity, the anxiety-racked law school dropout starts digging anyway.

Nguyen's tortuous investigation leads through the halls of Congress, the gritty oil fields of the Siberian tundra, stately Black Sea palaces of the petro-czars, and the mean streets of San Francisco. Aided by his misfit cousins, Tina Ngo, an attorney with a special practice in feral law, and Tommy Tran, a computer geek straddling the tightrope of legality, Nguyen unearths a malevolent alliance among a billionaire Russian oligarch, a duplicitous foundation director, and a renowned philanthropist hell-bent on tightening Russia's monopoly on the European energy market by choking-off American exports. If it means corrupting the American electoral system through illegal campaign contributions, political blackmail, and a few dead bodies, so be it.

In this dark world of Russian deception, Nguyen unravels a complex tangle of illegal offshore accounts, shell corporations, and front companies, all while ducking the crosshairs of the SVR's most skilled assassins. He may solve a murder and maybe save a republic.