Sibanda and the Rainbird

Sibanda and the Rainbird introduces Detective Inspector Jabulani Sibanda, a bush-savvy policeman stationed in a large village on the borders of a national park in rural Matabeleland, Zimbabwe. Sibanda's expertise often outranks - and frustrates - his colleagues, not least his superiors. But when Sibanda isn't feeling challenged enough, there's always his courtship of local beauty Khanyi Mpofu to keep him busy and further distract him from his memories of Berry Barton who he met while studying in the UK.However, Sibanda soon encounters more pressing matters. A horribly mutilated corpse is discovered in the park near the luxurious Thunduluka Lodge. At first it looks like the corpse was savaged by vultures, but Sibanda quickly concludes that the victim was murdered for body parts and from then on nothing is quite like it seems. With Sibanda are his trusty sidekicks: Sergeant Ncube and Miss Daisy. Ncube is an overweight, many-wived mechanical genius and Miss Daisy is an ancient, truculent Land Rover that is the apple of Ncube's eye. And then there is the bush itself, explored through Sibanda's passion for and encyclopaedic knowledge of it, which emerges as a character in its own right in this madcap, contemporary African adventure.