Set in present-day Washington, where power and ambition have attained new levels of insanity, The General reaches back in time to peel the layers of evil from a brilliantly concealed episode of treachery, death, and deception during the Vietnam era.

The investigators probing the brutal murder of the Air Force Chief of Staff know that the General's death had been precipitated by a gruesome act of Vietcong torture - death by a thousand cuts. Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Jensen, the officer assigned to the case, discovers that the General's death is a link in a chain of hideous crimes, beginning with closely guarded secrets of the Vietnam War and extending now to the higher levels of the US government. With lives, careers, and history in the balance, Jensen is caught between blind allegiance to authority and a nobler, higher patriotism. His path to the truth is strewn with minefields - and the answers he seeks will have shocking consequences.