Harte Banning, a much-decorated American soldier, returns from WWII to his home in Svart Nwari, a sleepy town on the coast of French West Africa. Fresh out of an Army hospital, Harte has been summoned home because Jacqueline, his gorgeous wife, had been found dead some days before. "Suicide," said chess-playing Colonel Andre Limoges, commandant of the gendarmes. "Suicide, hell," said Harte. So Harte turns tenacious bloodhound and raging bull in a china shop and starts to unravel the whole nasty business. The murky, outwardly intractable trail leads into many dark corners where he finds all the answers he was looking for and a few others he hadn't counted on. Svart Nwari is a brooding mystery yarn written in a manner reminiscent of some of Graham Greene's best "entertainments."