Detective Inspector Jack Carrigan of the British Metropolitan Police has to deal with a gruesome murder of a Ugandan student which forces him to confront the dark secrets of a trip he made to Uganda some twenty years before. It's 1990 and Jack Carrigan and his friends, David and Ben, have just graduated from university in the UK and they decide to holiday in Uganda before they branch out in different directions. But while heading for the Murchison Falls, they drive straight into the arms of a rebel army.
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The story fast tracks to 2012 when Jack is a Detective Inspector of the British Metropolitan Police in London. He's leading an investigation into the death of a Ugandan student, Grace Okello, who's been brutally raped and murdered in her apartment, and her heart extracted. Jack's immediate superior, Branch, wants the case sewn up quickly but doesn't trust Jack's nonconformist attitude, so he assigns Detective Constable Geneva Miller to Jack's team to spy on him and help keep him in line.
Investigations reveal that Grace was a student at the School of African and Oriental Studies (SAOS) and was writing a thesis on the armed conflict in her country. Geneva believes this caused her murder. Jack believes she was victim of a sex attack but asks his friend Ben (from the trip to Uganda) who's been back to Uganda a few times, to have a look at her dissertation.
The killer then throws the case wide open when he publishes a video on YouTube of the last moments of his torture of Grace. Geneva learns from a friend who travelled extensively in Uganda, that the Black Throated Wind referred to in Grace's dissertation was the pseudonym for rebel leader, Lawrence Ngomo, implicated in the murders of four British aid workers in Uganda but allowed to live in London after possibly providing information crucial to the case. He also had a penchant for extracting the hearts of his opponents. Branch and Jack are still not convinced of the validity of the Ngomo angle. So Jack focuses the team's attention on Gabriel, also of Ugandan heritage and Grace's boyfriend who'd been heard arguing with Grace and making threats, the night of her murder. Gabriel's taken into custody but freed when the hands of the killer, as shown in the video, reveal him to have a darker skin than Gabriel's whose finger prints also don't match those at the murder scene.
Jack discovers from Grace's college friend, Cecilia, that she had been meeting secretly with a possible ex-child soldier from Ngomo's army, most recently at a birthday party held at the college. Pictures of the party posted on Facebook enable Jack's team to positively identify the killer.
Armed with the killer's picture, Jack delves into London's illegal immigrant community and discovers that the killer's name is Bayanga and that he had indeed been a child soldier. He'd last been seen with a wad of money given to him by an associate he'd recently bumped into and who had given him a job. Jack realizes that Bayanga is working for someone and starts to take Geneva's theories about Ngomo seriously. Had Ngomo ordered Grace's murder because she was uncovering his long-buried atrocities?
However, the killer, Bayanga starts to stalk Ben's family and when Ben takes up a work appointment outside of town, Jack decides on police surveillance of his house because Ursula has seen a person fitting Bayanga's description watching the house.
Meanwhile, Geneva spots Gabriel at SAOS where he's also a student and follows him to a house in Willesden Green where he's let in by an old man fitting Ngomo's description. Jack and his team invade the house but find Ngomo already brutally murdered and Grace's heart shoved down his throat. They discover a bunch of letters which reveal that Ngomo was Grace's father from whom she'd been estranged but that they'd been slowly patching up their relationship. So who then was behind Grace's murder? The Ugandan Embassy and the high powers at the Metropolitan Police do all they can to thwart this seemingly new political angle to the case.
Geneva and Jack decide to go after Gabriel again and get some answers but they find Gabriel and one of his girlfriends, brutally murdered at the girl's apartment. While Geneva is investigating the bathroom, she sees a dark shape in the bath tub, hidden by the shower curtain. It's Bayanga and he quickly seizes her and puts a knife to her throat. Jack lets the killer escape to save Geneva's life. He then decides to take up surveillance himself at Ben's house in case Bayanga heads there next.
Flash back and we're again in the Uganda of 1990 when Jack and his two friends, David and Ben find themselves facing down the barrel of soldier guns instead of arriving at the Murchison Falls. Jack's book of self-penned songs is mistaken for coded spy language and he's taken away for a prolonged, interrogation. He is in the process of making a fake spying confession to save his friends when there's a sudden commotion and he's released, and so is Ben who reveals that David is dead. No reason is given and for years Jack shrinks from knowing the details. David's body was never located. A stone bearing his name was placed at an empty grave at his father's church.
We are back in the present and Jack is watching Ben's house when he hears sounds of forced entry, screams and a gunshot. He arrives on the scene to find that Ursula has shot the killer dead. While police details are mapping out the scene, Jack is paging through a photo album on the mantle-piece when he comes across a picture of Ben standing with colleagues and suddenly everything falls into place.
Jack knows exactly where to find Ben – at David's grave. Ben is expecting him and is holding a gun. Jack shows him the picture from his house which shows Ben with his arm around a much younger Bayanga. Ben begins his explanations which go back to the Uganda trip in 1990. Jack learns that when his friends were separated from him, they'd been forced to kill at least two of the aid workers (whose deaths had been blamed on Ngomo) purportedly to save Jack's life but that David had been so horrified by what he'd done, he'd turned the gun on himself. Grace had been getting closer to learning this truth and exonerating her father, thereby exposing Ben and bringing shame to himself and his family. So Ben had ordered Bayanga, who'd been his field assistant on a trip to Uganda and whom he'd kept contact with, to find out who Grace's source was and to destroy him but not to kill her. Geneva arrives on the scene amid these revelations and apprehends Ben.
Jack later learns, from Geneva's investigations, that the British authorities had always known the truth about the aid workers because Ngomo had told them and that he'd been granted asylum in return for his silence.
Best part of story, including ending:
I liked the way the power of the Internet and social media were incorporated into the story. What I didn't like about the book was the depressing portrayal of Uganda and its people which came across as stereotypical.
Best scene in story:
I liked the scene when Geneva follows Gabriel to a house in Willesdon Green and he is let in by none other than Lawrence Ngomo, the rebel leader and subject of Grace's dissertation. This moves the plot forward because it was stalling a bit and it adds an interesting political twist to the tale.
Opinion about the main character:
Jack Carrigan lives too much in his head and it is difficult to know why he is so troubled when he was not involved in the crimes committed in Uganda some twenty years before.
