Seize the Day is a suspenseful story of considerable scope. Harris a prize winning novelist writes with nostalgia of his youth, of pride in his army service in Japan and with exhilaration about the pursuit of the defeated North Korean Army late in 1950. Wounded that year Harris returned to Australia, later studied Chinese and was posted back to Korea in 1953 and placed in charge of a group of linecrossing South Koreans. On his discharge Harris joined ASIO; he discusses the Petrov defection and later from Hong Kong he observes Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution and how some of Mao's maddened young Red Guards, urged on by Madame Mao, threatened the Colony.