Frightening, heartbreaking, and exquisitely calibrated, The Constant Gardener opens with the gruesome murder of the young and beautiful Tessa Quayle near northern Kenya's Lake Turkana - the birthplace of mankind. Her putative African lover and traveling companion, a doctor with one of the aid agencies, has vanished from the scene of the crime. Tessa's much older husband, Justin, a career diplomat at the British High Commission in Nairobi, sets out on a personal odyssey in pursuit of the killers.
Tragedy elevates Justin Quayle, amateur gardener and ineffectual bureaucrat, seemingly oblivious to his wife's cause, when he wakes to his own resources and the extraordinary courage of the woman he barely had time to love.