The last time Atlanta tax assessor Joe Brock saw his teenage daughter Cynthia alive, they parted in anger. Now he's identifying her gunshot-blasted corpse in a police morgue, and the only thing he recognizes about her mutilated body is the tattoo on her shoulder-the little blue butterfly that caused their final argument.

Cynthia's body has been found in the swank Atlanta home of drug dealer and bar owner Jack Sloan, who is also dead, along with an unidentified young woman. Four half-eaten take-out Mexican meals point to the presence of someone else on the night of the murders-the person Joe is convinced must have killed his impetuous daughter.

Joe soon discovers that Cynthia's tattoo, a delicate Blue Buddha butterfly from Afghanistan, had a deeper significance than mere youthful rebellion: it's how the debauched Jack Sloan branded all of his favorite "girls." It's also the name of a potent strain of Afghan marijuana-Jack's specialty.

Obsessed with finding Cynthia's murderer, Joe tracks the enigma of the Blue Buddha into Atlanta's dangerous drug world and the twisted legacy of the war in Afghanistan. Among a shadowy group of war veterans who call themselves the Blue Buddha Brotherhood, Joe searches for his daughter's killer. It seems their humanitarian enterprise has lately taken a corrupt and deadly turn, and those who haven't been killed off are now vying among themselves for Jack Sloan's fortune in cash, whose whereabouts he revealed only to his favorite girl, Cynthia.

Joe at first cares only about bringing his daughter's killer to justice. But as he peels back layer after layer of the mystery, he finds himself drawn into the hunt for Jack Sloan's stash, and finally in danger of becoming the next victim of the veiled and deadly Blue Buddha.