"It's not pleasant making Molotov cocktails inside a car - even just a couple of handfuls of them. The petrol spills when you're filling the bottles. The motor oil, which you add to make the contents slightly more sticky - a bit more like napalm - gets everywhere. The fumes fill the car no matter how many windows you open. And when you're working with a chain-smoker tempers tend to flare."

In 1980, after years of civil war, white minority rule in Zimbabwe came to an end. Within months, preparations were being made for a genocidal assault on the minority Matabele tribe.

A decade or more later, Daniel Hove, a mild-mannered surgeon living discontentedly in self-imposed exile in England, gets the dreaded phone call. His sister is dead, his mother distraught.

He returns home for the funeral. But her death certificate is a fraud, the doctor who signed it is an arrogant liar, and the policeman who brought in her body is the thuggish tool of someone high in the party elite. Daniel's questions result in him being beaten senseless. Left for dead.

Or was he?

Daniel can't even play a decent game of hospital politics. How does he expect to survive in the frontier badlands, where it pays to look away and keep your mouth shut.

From Matabeleland to the tip of the continent and back again, through the paranoid undertows of southern Africa...

"I can't wait for his next novel. In the meantime, I'm reading The Rain That Clears The Chaff again. It's that good. It's the best book I read in 2012; one of the best books you're going to read this year. It's a gem waiting to be discovered. You won't regret it." (Joseph Nthini, The South African)

The Rain That Clears The Chaff - The New Thriller From AC O'NEILL