The star of this book is the treacherous Skeleton Coast where the action takes place at two different periods in history, in the 1950s and during WWII.
Geoffrey Peace is the skipper of a large fishing boat called the Etosha who works in these unpredictable waters. When visiting a friend in Swakopmund, a strange incident with a German tourist leads the story to go back to WWII, where Peace is the commander of a submarine HMS Trout who is given an onerous, top secret assigment to destroy a brand new type of U-Boat in the waters off south-western Africa.
When the story returns to the 1950s, Peace and his crew on the Etosha are chartered by a sinister man who wants to be put ashore on the coast so he can find an onymacris beetle in the nearby mountains. The man brings along a female scientist and a sinister bodyguard who it turns out is the only survivor of the destroyed U-Boat.
Peace is kidnapped as he and a member of his crew take their three passengers ashore. The sunsets, the currents, the vicious tides, and the wrecked ships of this part of the world are described in great detail as the drama unfolds amongst the sand and bare rock of the unforgiving mountains. Giant lions, stampeding zebras, and stinking hyenas are just some of the dangers as only one of the five humans survives to tell their tale.