Scobie, a police officer in a flyblown West African colony during the war, is above suspicion. Then, passed over for promotion, he is forced to borrow money from a Syrian trader to send his faded wife Louise on holiday. In her absence, he falls in love with a pathetic child widow . . . and, inexorably, his conscience and his love of God lead him to disaster.

(Key Words: Fiction, West Africa, Love, Suicide, Graham Greene, Police Officers, God, Adultery).