In a remote area of Northern Kenya, the region's most dedicated activist, the brilliant and passionate Tessa Quayle, has been found brutally murdered. Tessa's traveling companion, a local doctor, appears to have fled the scene, and the evidence points to a crime of passion. Sandy Woodrow, Sir Bernard Pellegrin, and the other members of the British High Commission assume that Tessa's widower, their mild-mannered and unambitious colleague Justin Quayle, will leave the matter to their discretion. They could not be more wrong. This career diplomat's equilibrium has been exploded by the loss of the woman he was deeply devoted to. They were opposites whose attraction sustained a marriage, the memories of which now spur Justin to take decisive action for the first time in his life and diplomatic career. Haunted by remorse and jarred by rumors of his wife's infidelities, Justin surprises himself by plunging headlong into a dangerous odyssey. Determined to clear his wife's name and "finish what she started," Justin embarks on a crash course to learn about the pharmaceutical industry, whose crimes Tessa was on the verge of uncovering, and journeys across two continents in search of the truth. His eyes are soon opened to a vast conspiracy at once deadly and commonplace, one that has claimed innocent lives--and is about to put his own at risk.