Bored with his life in dreary postwar England, 20-year-old Alastair Tompkins applied for a job with the Foreign Office and, much to his surprise, was offered a post as a district police officer in Kenya.
He accepted, and thus began a new chapter in his life…
Having no previous experience of either foreign travel or police work, his new job proved something of a culture shock and in the early chapters his readers are invited to share his sense of wonder and bewilderment at the unfamiliar environment in which he found himself.
The reason why Alastair and a number of other young men had been so rapidly recruited and deployed was due to recent disturbances involving an insurgent organisation known as the Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA) - commonly known as the 'Mau Mau'. A rebellion was under way, which would eventually lead to the end of British colonial rule in East Africa, but in the meantime the officers of the Kenya Police were needed to help keep a lid on the situation.
But Alastair's workload was by no means restricted to thwarting the Mau Mau, as readers will discover as they accompany him on a variety of escapades reflecting the sometimes comical situations and eccentric characters that his duties as a colonial police officer exposed him to.