When Captain Willem Pretorius, an Afrikaner police officer, is brutally murdered in the tiny backwater town of Jacob's Rest, Detective Emmanuel Cooper is sent to investigate.

Cooper is a 'British' South African and is immediately viewed with suspicion by the locals. Complicating things, the police Security Branch are soon sent in to take over. But Cooper isn't interested in political expediency or making friends in high places - he just wants the killer behind bars.

As Cooper pursues his own inquiries, stripping away the picture-perfect façade of Jacob's Rest, he finds himself ensnared in a tangle of violence and illicit desire. Bad luck for someone with secrets of their own ...