A routine drug raid goes awry in Boston's Chinatown, killing a police officer as he batters down the door to execute a no-knock search warrant. The police arrest the man, but the court orders them to produce the confidential snitch whose information was the basis for the bust.

The search for the informant will plunge lawyers on both sides of the case into the legal battle of their lives. High-placed politicians, Chinese mobsters, and Boston's power elite will be dragged into court, their fates riding on the identity of this mystery informant, an informant known only as Cinderella.