Abigail Bukula, the brilliant young lawyer who in The October Killings (2009) teamed up with Yudel Gordon, veteran criminologist of Ebersohn’s oeuvre, returns in this political thriller.
When ten activists go missing in Zimbabwe, Abigail’s help is sought. Among the missing ten, believed to be held at the notorious Chikurubi prison, is Abigail's cousin – a gifted writer and the child of an aunt who died in the Gukuruhandi massacres of the early 1980s. Reading her cousin's work and trying to understand him, Abigail turns to Yudel, whom she hasn’t seen in four years.
Yudel follows Abigail to Zimbabwe where she wins the court battle for their release, but at Chikurubi there is no trace of the ten prisoners. In the days to follow, Abigail and Yudel search for the missing activists in a race against time. They uncover a relationship that no one could have anticipated in the complex power web in a country struggling to throw off the dictatorship of the past, and where success and tragedy are like Siamese twins.