Agents of the U.S. Department of Justice enlist professor James Barbour Matlock in their effort to uncover a drug-trafficking network operating at the very Carlyle University where Matlock teaches.
Why they draw him into this work, how he ends up one-on-one with an organized gang led by a certain Nimrod, and why the Department of Justice, while watching the bloody struggle of a lone man against a powerful underground network, does not come to his aid at the critical moments—these questions form the essence of the novel.