Set in Ballarat, Australia in 1959, Dr Lucien Blake has returned home after decades away to take over the country practice from his dying father.
A former Army Medical Officer and POW, Dr Blake is both a GP and the town?s police surgeon, which means he often finds himself investigating deaths -both natural and unnatural. He is an educated and well-travelled man, who has seen the worst that men can do to each other.
After training in Scotland, Dr Blake joined the British Army as a medical officer and served in the Far East during World War II. Unbeknown to his family, he married a Chinese woman and they had a child. But at the Fall of Singapore, they lost touch... forever. He is still haunted by the horrors of wars, his incarceration in Thailand?s infamous Ban Pong POW camp and his own personal loss.
At the end of his long ? and fruitless - search for his wife and child after the war, Dr Blake returns to his birthplace of Ballarat to see his sick and dying father, Thomas. His homecoming gives him roots and a purpose again. Outwardly, Dr Blake is the community?s moral compass in an age of change. Privately, he is a man cursed with firsthand knowledge of man?s inhumanity to man. Only a few understand his sly humour and see through his ever-present psychological suit of armour.