The comfortable world of prosperous Melbourne businessman David McCoy is suddenly ripped apart when his playboy son ends up on life support after being viciously stabbed and left for dead. Within days, his socialite daughter is bailed up in her home, stripped and totally shaved of her long blonde tresses. Second son Bradley narrowly escapes death in a terrifying arson attack at his tinder-dry bush hideaway. So does non-swimmer eldest son Trevor when a speeding boat upends his kayak and tumbles him into the river.

Each incident is followed by a cryptic message from the mysterious Tree Surgeon that he is carrying out essential pruning work on the family tree. McCoy knows there is something deeply sinister and dangerous behind the messages and tries to hide the details from over-protective second wife Melissa. He has a past that no one dare know. But what does he know of Melissa's past? And who is the threatening Tree Surgeon?

Desperate for help, he enlists the aid of disgraced British agent and reluctant sleuth Bromo Perkins now working undercover as a specialist travel agent with the McCoys among his elite clients.

Bromo seeks the genealogical expertise of long-time associate and lover Liz Shapcott. They delve deep into the foliage of McCoy's family tree to unravel a tortuous trail full of duplicity and death traps that winds back into the city's turbulent past of corruption, gangs and murder.