In a bullet-scarred game lodge Colin Tait, a journalist, waits to interview the hunter turned conservationist, Cornelius van Delden The occasion is the first wildlife conference after a black African war Van Delden's dramatic entrance triggers off a confrontation that takes Tait through the African heartland, now almost stripped of its wildlife As van Delden tries to prevent his ex-partner slaughtering the last great herd of elephants, the reader is drawn into a conflict as savage as the blazing African landscape