RCMP Staff Sargeant Dan Laurenson is a man who tries to balance the traditional macho strictures of his job with his strong empathy for human nature.In The Tao of Laurenson, a vagabond is seen wandering the streets of St. Michael, a town so small that everyone notices this stranger. When Laurenson stops to talk to the man, he discovers that Michaelangelo Smith is lucid and intelligent, and desperately trying to find his daughter who disappeared five years earlier. But Smith has a beef with the police, who offered him no support when she disappeared and even accused him of murdering her. Laurenson offers to help Smith but Smith refuses him. After several strange attacks on Smith, however, Laurenson finds himself looking both for the girl and an attempted murderer, and thinking the unthinkable, could Rozalind Smith be trying to kill her father?