9. THE SNAKES OF TUMARA — SA POLICE SERIES
In the unforgiving, remote bushveld of the Northern Transvaal, where superstition and harsh reality walk hand in hand, a young policeman is found dead beside his campfire. He is the latest victim in a series of bizarre and deadly cobra attacks. His last, unfinished diary entry whispers of murder, not an accident. The case lands on the desk of Detective Sergeant Kobus Roode, a formidable young detective from Johannesburg with a reputation for solving impossible cases.
Upon his arrival in the land of the Mkopo tribe, however, Roode is met by a wall of hostility and fear. The tribe is controlled by the cunning witch doctor, Tumara, who holds the superstitious people in his thrall with the legend of the “Great Serpent Spirit.” Anyone who questions Tumara’s authority, or speaks to the police, becomes the next target of the vengeful spirit and its lethal snakes.
The danger is not merely superstition. The cobras are unnaturally aggressive and seemingly everywhere. Roode himself narrowly escapes death when he is trapped in a hut by one of the reptiles, only to be saved by the timely intervention of the local farmer, Nicolaas Bredenkamp. Amid the tension, he also meets Bredenkamp’s beautiful and bold niece, Marie Naude, whose curiosity places her directly in harm’s way. As Roode delves deeper, he realizes that the attacks are too precise and too deliberate to be mere coincidence. Someone is using the snakes as a weapon of terror. Virtually alone, surrounded by hostile tribespeople and deadly reptiles that seem to strike on command, Kobus must unravel a web of lies, power plays, and cold-blooded murder. Is Tumara truly the mastermind, or is he merely a pawn in a larger, more diabolical conspiracy? In a land where the hiss of a cobra can signify a curse or an execution, Kobus must unmask the truth before he becomes the next name on the list of victims.
#SAPoliceSeries
