Vera & Tolliver

In early 20th century British East Africa, there are rules for the British and different ones for the Africans. Vera McIntosh, the daughter of Scottish missionaries, doesn't feel she belongs to either group; having grown up in Africa, she is not interested in being the well-bred Scottish woman her mother would like her to be. More than anything, she dreams of seeing again the handsome police officer she's danced with. But more grisly circumstances bring Justin Tolliver to her family's home.

The British don’t belong in Africa. Their skins are too pale, their clothing too heavy and elaborate, their morality all wrong. And yet, here they are in 1912 in the British Protectorate of East Africa, tangled in an uneasy peace with the Sultan of Zanzibar. Much of the tangle in this new mystery in Alfieri’s East Africa series concerns the slave trade. The British have outlawed it, but, well, it’s all a matter of who you know and who you owe, isn’t it? That slippery morality infuriates Vera Tolliver, a Scottish missionary’s daughter and the bride of a English police officer.

Justin Tolliver is on the brink of an enormous change. The younger son of an English peer - that is, the son with no money and no prospects - he had joined the police force in British East Africa, full of dreams of bringing his majesty's justice to a dark and savage world. But it's 1913, and with his faith in the British government in tatters, Justin is opting instead for life as an African farmer and a newly minted family-man. It is his wife, Vera, who has helped him put aside images of darkness and come to see Africa, instead, as all but lit from within.

Another mystery awaits Vera and Tolliver in British East Africa. Justin Tolliver and his tribal lieutenant Kwai Libazo are still smarting from the dreadful events that ended their work on the police force a year ago. Justin and his wife, Vera, are establishing their farm in Ngong. Kwai and his baby daughter are living on the property, but tension still exists between the two men. One beautiful Sunday morning, a passing stranger discovers a dead body on the road that leads to their home. A Kukuyu man has been shot in the back.