Nesrine

Smashed skull, snapped ribs, and a cloying smell of carrion. Leave the body for the hyenas to devour - no body, no case. But when Kalahari game rangers stumble on a human corpse midmeal, it turns out the murder wasn't perfect after all. Enough evidence is left to suggest foul play. Detective David "Kubu" Bengu of the Botswana Criminal Investigation Department is assigned to the case.

Three times Detective Chief Inspector Pascoe has wrongly accused dead-pan joker Franny Roote. This time he's determined to leave no gravestone unturned as he tries to prove that the ex-con and aspiring academic is mad, bad, and dangerous to know. But over his investigation looms the huge form of Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel.

When Park Ranger Anna Pigeon answers a call to historic Mt. Locust, once a producing plantation and inn on Mississippi's Natchez Trace Parkway, the last thing she expects to encounter is a naked and very dead man. His body bears what looks like the brutal scars of an S&M ritual gone terribly wrong. When the deceased turned out to be the brother of a candidate for the office of local sheriff, a host of cover-ups, hidden agendas, old allegiances, and buried secrets begins to emerge.

All Victor Carl knows is that he's just woken up with his suit in tatters, his socks missing, and a stinging pain in his chest thanks to a new tattoo he doesn't remember getting: a heart inscribed with the name Chantal Adair.