"Five days before Christmas, Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper sits at his desk at the Johannesburg major crimes squad, ready for his holiday in Mozambique. A call comes in: a respectable white couple has been assaulted and left for dead in their bedroom. The couple's teenage daughter identifies the attacker as Aaron Shabalala-- the youngest son of Zulu Detective Constable Samuel Shabalala--Cooper's best friend and a man to whom he owes his life....