Blood rose - Margie Orford

Walvis Bay: a down-at-heel port town, isolated in the vast sweep of the Namib desert. Hard-eyed teenagers run the streets. Prostitutes gather around the transient dockworkers. Nobody chooses to live here. The perfect place to hide a killer...
When a homeless teenage boy is gruesomely murdered, police profiler Dr Clare Hart is brought into this claustrophobic township to work the case. To track down a monster with a taste for young male victims, Clare must enter the world of the desperate street kids who run the rackets of the dock. And Clare is glad for the distraction, a chance for some distance from her rocky romance with police Captain Riedwaan Faizal.
But when Riedwaan arrives to help with the investigation and try to salvage their relationship, it becomes clear that there is more at stake here than just their feelings. In fact their lives - and the lives of others - are in danger.