It is 1942, and the American and British armies are landing in North Africa to fight the German army led by General Erwin Rommel. Underground resistance to German occupation is rising across Europe. In Jugoslavia, Communist and royalist resistance movements are fighting both the Germans and each other. American and British agents are parachuting into Jugoslavia from Egypt to assist them.
Anton Rider, the safari hunter featured in Bull's celebrated novels The White Rhino Hotel, A Caf on the Nile and The Devil's Oasis, is dispatched to Jugoslavia to kill a brutal fascist commander and attack a Nazi concentration camp where Gypsies and others are being murdered. Raised as a boy by Gypsies in England, Anton is injured while parachuting into the mountains of Jugoslavia with an American agent who becomes his mortal enemy.
Meanwhile, Rider's son is wounded fighting Rommel's forces in North Africa, and Anton's beloved wife Gwenn, from whom he is separated, is having an affair in Cairo with a treacherous English officer. There the mysterious dwarf, Olivio Alavedo, is at the center of intrigue and fights to protect his absent friend, Anton Rider.
After romantic and military adventures in Jugoslavia, Anton returns to Egypt, where he confronts his enemies and seeks to recover the lady he loves.
As Forbes magazine wrote about The White Rhino Hotel, "A genuine epic centered in Africa by a writer who knows how to write, who knows his terrain intimately, who knows his characters and who knows how to spin a good yarn."