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The year is 1939. The U.S. is well along the road to recovery from the Great Depression as evidenced by its hosting of two international events: the New York World's Fair and the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco.

Across the Pacific, though, the picture is not as rosy. The Japanese Imperial Army is stepping up its invasion of China, and the Chairman of the National Government of China, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, is urgently seeking aid from other nations in fending off the well-equipped Japanese forces attacking his country..

While a few European countries are providing financial assistance to aid China's war effort, what Chiang Kai-shek needs most is U.S. military intervention. While President Franklin Roosevelt sympathizes with China, Congress is reluctant to involve the country in another foreign war.

With the situation growing more desperate every day, Chiang Kai-shek sends an attractive, well-spoken young woman named Sun Ling on a secret diplomatic mission to lobby for U.S. involvement in the Sino-Japanese War. Sun Ling's cover for this mission is as a representative of the Chinese government to the Golden Gate International Exposition.

Then, with her mission barely begun, Sun Ling mysteriously disappears without a trace from the expsition's Chinese Village. The influential Chinese-American businessmen assisting Sun Ling are certain she has been kidnapped or killed by Japanese agents to prevent her from completing her assignment. Trying to maintain the secrecy of Sun Ling's mission, the Chinese-Americans hire private eye Johnny Spicer to find the missing diplomat.

Spicer's investigation quickly envelops him in a deadly web of international intrigue and deception that leaves the Hollywood gumshoe wondering just exactly who is deceiving whom. PACIFICA is the story of that investigation. Told in the detective's own words, Spicer's first novel-length caper reveals a lethal plot with more twists and turns than San Francisco's famous Lombard Street.