Prester John

After his father dies, nineteen-year-old David Crawfurd is sent off to South Africa to earn his living as a storekeeper in the back of beyond. A strange encounter on the journey suggests that dark deeds and treacherous intrigues are afoot - all bound up with the mysterious primeval kingdom of Prester John. Set more than a century ago in backwater South Africa, is the great grandfather of today's thrillers. Buchan gives his young hero plenty to do in sussing out and confronting a massive uprising by tribesmen who wish to slaughter all the white settlers for a hundred miles around.