This is a novel set in 1980 when the South African Defence Forces were engaged in a secret bush war in Angola and Namibia. Joshua Smith, an over-promoted police sergeant with an anti-Apartheid activist for a mother, is sent to investigate the battlefield murder of a wealthy white officer. There are three suspects, all unlikely, no forensic evidence, no witnesses and, as he is fully aware, no rule of law. Sucked into an investigation which has its roots in the politics of Apartheid at a point in time when Nelson Mandela was just emerging from obscurity, Smith is joined by an officer from Military Intelligence, Trudi Mostert. Together they dig into a mystery that goes all the way back to Smith's childhood in the multi-racial District 6 of Cape Town, the vicious realities of small town apartheid in Krugersburg and Smith's own complicity in the state of Apartheid.