Life in the San le Mer golfing eco-estate on the KZN north coast seems idyllic. With its diplomatic-level security, smarmy country club and resort-style pools and restaurants, it is home to the rich, famous and infamous. But beneath the luxurious and well-manicured surface, corruption, lechery, evil and debauchery seethe. It is in this rotten stew that a series of seemingly random and coincidental events leads to the murder of one of the estate's most respected residents: Advocate Norman Ware. As Detective De Villiers sifts through the witnesses and suspects - a philandering plastic surgeon, a harvester of body parts, a BEE property tycoon, a serial killer with a penchant for teenage girls, a recluse with ophidiophobia, and a queer, cross-dressing homophobe - the pillars of lies and deceit upon which the exclusive estate residents' lives have been built start collapsing. Who is the killer? Is Norman Ware really an innocent victim? And what is the link between all the different players? The Murder of Norman Ware is an essentially South African novel, twisted around the outrageous inequalities that exist in this socially, economically and culturally diverse country. It plays with the ideas of fate and of action and consequence. It's clever. It's macabre. And it's very, very black.