Third in the series of police thrillers set in Botswana by Johannesburg natives Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip, featuring Assistant Superintendent David "Kubu" Bengu of the Botswana Criminal Investigation Division.
When an obnoxious employee at the Mabuasehube Ranger Station goes missing and eventually turns up dead with a broken skull at the bottom of a steep ravine in the Kalahari wasteland, nobody is particularly sorry --- Monzo was a man who seemed to go out of his way to antagonize everyone who had to deal with him. Initially the death was assumed to be an accident, the fatal result of a moment's carelessness in an unforgiving environment. But when the local police accuse three Bushmen of murdering Monzo, Kubu is drawn unwillingly into the investigation by his childhood friend, Khumanego. Khumanego is an advocate for the Bushmen people, the small indigenous nomads who have roamed the arid Kalahari for centuries, and he insists that the murder accusation is motivated by racial prejudice. And it is true that there is a well-documented history of racism and oppression in the dealings between the Swetsana people and the Bushmen.
Furthermore, this is definitely not a time that Kubu wants to be away from home and his wife, Joy and their brand new baby daughter, Tumi. Kubu is aggravated to find that his initial investigation indicates that the local police show no inclination to look beyond their first assumptions. He quickly gathers enough evidence to cast doubt on the case and force the police to release the Bushmen from police custody. But this is not enough to clear them of suspicion; so he faces the challenge of finding out what really happened.
When a second, then a third, equally bizarre murders occur, also linked to the Kalahari and implicating Bushmen, Kubu is more than ever convinced that something hidden in the desert is at the root of these strange deaths. The only way to find the truth is to pursue it into the savage wasteland himself. What Kubu discovers there will test all of his assumptions --- and his ability to survive.
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