As a child, Ali Neumann fled from the bantustan of Quazulu, to escape from the police, which was at war with the then illegal African National Congress. Even his mother, the only surviving member of the family, did not know what had happened to him... 

Now, as the head of the criminal police in Cape Town, the showcase city of South Africa, Neumann has to face two major scourges: violence and AIDS, in which the country breaks every record. Things get worse when a girl is found brutally murdered in the Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden. A drug of unknown composition seems to be the cause of the murder. Neumann, who is investigating the attack on his mother in the townships, sends his right-hand man, Brian Epkeen, and the young Fletcher on the trail of the killer. They have no idea who they are chasing and where they are going... 

Although apartheid has disappeared from the political scene, the old enemies continue to fight in the shadow of national reconciliation... 

The book was made into a film in 2013 by Jerome Salle, starring Orlando Bloom and Forrest Whitaker.