Veteran cop Schalk Lourens is trying to put the past behind him. But when his old boss, retired police chief Piet Pieterse is murdered, Schalk nds history has a way of infecting everything.Meanwhile, it's also an election year. People are pinning their hopes on charismatic ANC candidate Gideon Radebe but there's opposition and in this volatile country, unrest is never far from the surface.Schalk must tread a di cult path between the new regime and the old, between the personal and the professional, between justice and revenge.Present Tense is a riveting hard-boiled police procedural set in modern South Africa.