Clavell focuses on a group of people connected with a joint British-Iranian company that provides helicopter transportation, primarily to oil fields, and shows how the overthrow of the Shah affects them, their loved ones, and their enemies. The cast of characters is very large. Danger stalks each one, but nearly all the principal characters, at least the Europeans, manage to survive. Help generally arrives in the nick of time.

Often the reader is told that whatever seems to have happened — a kidnapping, a secret murder, even a business deal — either was not what it seemed to be, or was planned to happen that way. Psychological and spiritual changes of heart, however, are signalled by rather obvious symbolism.

For example, Lochart's sleeping on an Iranian bed rather than a European bed suggests that he will accept Islam.

The events of the novel are...