The book follows Daniel Pullman, a white man, who is also arguably the most renowned of all tennis players. Dan seems to have everything going for him: he is on top of his career, he is super rich, handsome and adored by all and sundry. He has a beautiful fiancee, Cindy, who is very much in love with and will do anything for him. Yet he was unsatisfied and unsettled, on the edge of a burnout. Something seems to be missing in his life and he craves an escape from it all to reevaluate it.
So when his brother, Joe, suggested they go on a holiday to a luxurious resort in the fictional town of Pella in a little imaginary African country of Limbaki, Dan jumped at the opportunity craving the anonymity that the resort offers. There he would meet and fall in love with Leticia, the unassuming and shy black African hotel maid who caught not only his fancy but also his heart. Dan would embark on a passionate journey of carnal pleasure forgetting every other thing. Nothing else seems to matter – not his fiance, not his family and certainly not his career. His yearning for Leticia’s soft body eclipses all else, leaving his family worried.
Then there was a coup and the reality hits – Dan must return to the US, to a waiting fiance, family and the tennis world but not before some doubts on his sporting ability has been sown. He has found that he was unable to beat Leticia’s brother, Kolo, an amateur tennis player at games they had played leading him to doubt his own ability.
While in the US, Dan – a decent man, arranged to bring Leticia and his brother to the US to help them escape almost certain death. Letitia would continue to live as his mistress in the apartment he had set up for her while her brother would work in the Pullmans sporting store. Everything seems to have fallen into place until one day Kolo’s lifeless body was discovered by his colleague from the Pullman stores. Then all hell broke loose.
Who could have hated the decent, likeable African boy so much as to kill him? What possible motives could they have to want his head? By professing a desire to go into professional tennis, had Kolo signed his own death warrant when he broke his agreement with the Pullmans? But the Pullmans seem to have impenetrable alibis.
