Rhodesia, 1943. The body of parachute instructor and local celebrity, Felicity Langham, has been found brutally raped and murdered. The police have arrested the most obvious suspect, a black man named Innocent. But it turns out, he is. WPC Pip Lovejoy is convinced that there's more to this case than meets the eye, and is determined to obtain justice for the murdered woman.
Paul Bryant, the Squadron Leader responsible for training RAF pilots, needs to find out why three aircraft have crashed in as many weeks. One of the pilots has been discovered killed by poisoned arrows, but there is no sign of his plane.
When Pip and Bryant's investigations collide, a much more serious crime becomes apparent. The man behind it, Reitz, believes that if Hitler can cull the Jews, he can cull the blacks. Reitz and his team have discovered a poison so deadly that a single drop of it can kill a man in less than a minute. Their plan is to detonate this poison bomb during an RAF passing out parade, killing a thousand pilots. This in turn would likely lead to civil war in South Africa. Reitz's aim is to create an independent Afrikaner-controlled South Africa, and he doesn't care what lengths he has to go to achieve it.
