The Constant Gardener

Tessa Quayle, the lovely wife of a member of the British Foreign Service based in Nairobi, is killed in a mysterious car accident near a lake in Kenya. Tessa was an activist who had recently come across sensitive documents exposing an international corporate conspiracy to exploit Kenya's poor. Tessa's husband, Justin, has been a mild-mannered official for decades, but when he decides to get to the bottom of Tessa's death, he discovers that he has an unexpected capacity to go against the grain. He'll need it, as his journey to the truth takes him through many levels of corporate and diplomatic intrigue in Kenya, Great Britain, Italy, Germany, and Canada. This novel by master of the spy thriller John Le Carre was adapted into a 2005 film starring Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz.