Trama

Jessica's trip to Hong Kong is interrupted by the murder of an American businessman negotiating a merger with a Chinese tycoon.

Jessica Fletcher has finally accepted House of Dunbar tycoon Brian's wife Emma Soon Dunbar's invitation to visit Hong Kong. While she's admiring Burmese jade, her host gets kidnapped, asking a $200,000 cash ransom. Police Insp. McLaughlin suggests the ransom will probably be quickly paid and insure a release, it's almost routine in the last years before the PRC's takeover, and so it happens. Unlike Emma, Brian is inclined to believe it was just another move by his merger-candidate Kai Kuan, whose son David is actually dating Brian's daughter April Dunbar, a forbidden love. Dunbar executive Mark Tower, who was found out selling goods supposedly destroyed in a warehouse fire to Shangai by women's apparel division head Louise Walton, offers his services to the Kuans. Even though the merger talks look like a dead-end, the sumptuous 110th Dunbar's anniversary banquet goes on with the Kuans for appearances sake, serving a century egg- which kills Brian by cyanide concentrate, some of which is found in Emma's ceramics studio.—KGF Vissers

In Hong Kong to lecture at the university, Jessica's barely arrived when her good friend Emma Dunbar is kidnapped. Emma's husband Brian is in the midst of merger negotiations with a Chinese competitor, Kai Kuan. He's a major player on the business scene and quickly pays the ransom demand. His wife is safely returned and Jessica is taken aback with how how routine such things seem to be. Dunbar and Kuan's children are in love and Dunbar in particular objects to their seeing one another. Dunbar executive Mark Tower is out to protect his own interests, as is Louise Walton who heads their ready-to-wear women's fashion division. When Brian Dunbar is poisoned at a company banquet, Jessica works with Inspector McLaughlin of the Hong Kong police to solve the crime.—garykmcd