- When the Cheng Detective Agency is hired by the CIA to investigate the murder of a US sailor, Sam is asked to help out as a favour to the widowed owner, Patricia.
- When the Cheng Detective Agency is hired by the CIA to investigate the murder of a US sailor, Sam is asked to help out as a favour to the widowed owner, Patricia. But as Sam tries to save the life of an innocent man, he is also forced to re-visit memories of the killing of a childhood friend, wrongly accused of stealing food while both boys were prisoners in Changi Prison during WW2.—Anonymous
- Sam Callahan is tortured by a brutal past he cannot avenge: the death of his mother and his friend, Bartel when he was a boy. Sam and his mother were Australians who were captured as POWs by the Japanese and interned at Changi Prison (the eastern tip of Singapore) during WWII. Although it has been a few months since the death of Winston Cheng, Sam appears immediately when requested by his widow Patricia. She wants to accept work from the CIA--just one last case for the once successful Cheng Detective Agency, involving a black Navy ensign framed for the murder of his best pal, a white ensign. Sam's mistress, Claire is married to a British industrialist and she helps in with the more delicate details.—LA-Lawyer
- 1964-65. Singapore is a city at a crossroads. Political and racial tensions are at fever pitch as the British pull out, and a new nation is about to be born. The lights of Bugis Street have never burned so bright: bootleg copies of Motown songs boom out from street stalls; the Rolling Stones are in town along with tourists and American sailors fresh from Vietnam. They join British and Australian soldiers checking out the prostitutes and gambling dens en route to their own war in Borneo.
The famous Straits are filled with ships from around the world; and militant union demonstrations and race riots sweep the streets. The Cold War is hot in the tropics; Chinese gangs prosper; and people die as the city is hit by terrorist bombs.
The Malayan Emergency is over but has added new scars to the memories of colonial rule and the Japanese occupation during WW2. The sun may have set on the Empire, but British and Australian troops are still in the middle of an intense four-year jungle war in neighbouring Borneo, while in one year, terrorists will set off more than 29 bombs in Singapore itself. And then there are the Americans, and that war in Vietnam.
This is the city of Sam Callaghan (Don Hany), Patricia Cheng (Joan Chen), the CIA's Conrad Harrison (Michael Dorman) and the clients of the Cheng Detective Agency.
Sam Callaghan runs a sporadic import/export business with his Malayan partner Kang, but agrees to help neighbour Patricia Cheng at her detective agency after her husband is killed while working on a case. Patricia may not be a detective, but she knows she needs a good investigator with contacts in the Chinese and Malay communities, as well as among US/British ex-pats. Sam is all of that. But, after a childhood in a POW camp and a chequered career in military intelligence during the Malay Emergency, he is also carrying a lot of baggage.
However, he does enjoy a mutually satisfactory and discreet relationship with Claire Simpson (Maeve Dermody), the lonely and bored wife of an ex-pat oil company executive.
This then starts for Sam, as a case-by-case part-time job, and eventually he is effectively working almost full-time at the Cheng Detective Agency. The agency's cases range from the usual (straying spouses and petty fraudsters) to events with international implications and complications. Sam's contacts from his military days are useful - but they start to drag him back into a dark world that he would prefer to leave behind.
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