"At a guest house in the beautiful Franschhoek wine valley, a famous English mathematician is kidnapped and his two bodyguards are killed. It's clearly a professional hit, and the spent shell cases offer a chilling clue: Each is engraved with the head of a spitting cobra. Meanwhile, in Cape Town, a skilled young thief is using his talents to put his sister through college. Then one day he picks the wrong pocket, grabbing the wallet of a young American...

"Gentle but highly strung, Janet must support her Afrikaner husband in his new job as a plain-clothes policeman and specialist interrogator. Hektor-Jan heads off to work on New Year's Day, aware that he is unbearably close to a bloody drama about to unfold. As Janet's world tightens and threatens to fracture, she must look to her children and cling to the support of Alice, her black maid, and Solomon, her ever-faithful gardener. All too conscious...

"Having jeopardized their careers in an unauthorized investigation that threatened to reveal the corruption in South Africa's halls of power, Benny Griessel and Vaughn Cupido have been demoted from the elite Hawks police unit. While waiting to be transferred from Cape Town to seemingly mundane duty in Stellenbosch, Griessel receives a disturbing, anonymous letter: "I can only trust you and Captain Cupido. There is an adder in our bosom. Be careful...