Cobra - Deon Meyer (Benny Griessel #4)

Benny Griessel is first on the scene of a bloodbath at a luxury guesthouse on a beautiful Franschhoek wine farm. Two of the professionally executed dead are bodyguards, but there is no sign of the man they were meant to be protecting. Paul Morris, a British citizen with a brand new passport, new suitcase, new clothes, and no history, has been kidnapped. The only clue is an engraving on every shell case – the flaring head of a spitting cobra.

In Cape Town, skilled pickpocket Tyrone Kleinbooi is drawing on all his considerable talents to pay for his younger sister Nadia's university fees. Security guards arrest him after he steals a purse from a beautiful foreigner's handbag – but as they question him a figure enters and kills the security guards with consummate ease, leaving behind distinctive cobra-shell casings. In the chaos, Tyrone manages to escape with his loot. But he leaves his mobile phone behind.

Meanwhile Benny and his Hawk unit partners make some uncomfortable discoveries. Morris's passport is fake, and the British consulate is suddenly not very eager to cooperate. The cobra casings are the mark of a ruthless assassin and the missing man is an eminent Cambridge mathematician. What knowledge does he hold that is so desirable, and so dangerous? And then Nadia Kleinbooi is abducted ...