Blaise Marshall FRCVS is a veterinarian involved in the fight against organized wildlife crime. His ultimate opponent is an enigmatic international crime lord known as Lee Chin. As Marshall, accompanied by freelance reporter Catherine Schaffer, fight in a global conflict against animal cruelty and crime, they are progressively drawn into Chin's plans to locate, capture and market as medicine, the body parts of true dinosaurs living as a remnant population of in the central African country of Zagunda. Marshall and Schaffer attempt to foil an illegal importation of coelacanths in Singapore, then Marshall investigates suspicious events at a bull-fighting tournament at the behest of the Spanish government only to be kidnapped and forced to aid his hated enemy. Marshall meets, and falls for, an alluring Spanish bullfighter Silvia Cober before they all end up on an ill-fated safari with Chin's henchman Alex Ivanovs and facilitator Eugene Black, to the dark slopes of Erom-Btaka.