Lloyd Osbourne witnesses the remains of a body that has washed up on the Waikiki shore, and soon finds himself working alongside a remarkable local Chinese detective.Other dead bodies appear and the detectives draw up a list of missing men in the city.Writer Earl Derr Biggers is also vacationing at Waikiki and one morning his wife suddenly disappears. A search for her results in the kidnapping of Lloyd, and a massive opium enterprise is uncovered. A scandal at the Customs House involves the suicide of a cashier named William Wilder.Is Honolulu Sheriff Charles Rose merely incompetent or an active conspirator in the opium ring?And how is the murder of a young girl on Kaua'i somehow connected to all this?.