Tommy Jarret is a young former heroin addict from Strathbane. Happy about his drug-free future, he had rented a chalet and was writing a book about recovery. Hamish Macbeth is surprised to hear of his sudden death from an overdose because Tommy had seemed so happy and his life had even taken a spiritual bent after he had joined a local New Age group, the Church of the Rising Sun. Macbeth pokes around and becomes suspicious of the church. Posing as homeless and depressed, he joins the church and volunteers his services as a handyman. Although he doesn't find anything strange other than the church's belief that all troubles stem from sexual oppression, his superiors have been separately investigating the source of widespread drug infiltration into the Highlands and have also been poking around the church. Hamish is asked by the commanding officer, Detective Inspector Olivia Chater, to go undercover as a husband and wife team, posing as large-scale drug barons. In their new Armani-clad, chauffeured existence, they travel to Amsterdam and uncover an operation that is strangely ordinary, but hardly an ordinary case.