West Country Wildlife's birdwatching package to America has presented tour guide Rob Earl with the perfect opportunity for a reunion with his old college friends Mick Brownscombe, now working in Texas, and Oliver Adamson. Rob's tour party is hoping for spectacular sights at High Island on the Upper Texas coast. But as the birds descend, the party is greeted with a far more shocking sight – the dead body of Mick Brownscombe. Back in Britain PIs George and Molly Palmer-Jones are working on a minor fraud case in which the name of Brownscombe Associates has also cropped up. So when George receives a desperate transatlantic call from his friend Rob, he is on the first plane to Texas.