Savannah Blue — William Harrison

When the close confidante of the U.S. President is murdered in Africa, a rag-tag task force assembles to solve that crime & similar ones: people killed evidently by cobra venom. Can a cadre of disparate govt. agencies headed up by a veteran contract operator & an offensive lower functionary succeed?

Author Harrison has written several novels with an Africa setting: here, a killer moves unimpeded into Nigeria, Egypt, & Zanzibar, fairly taunting law enforcement & the comic American opera set up to capture him. @The center of the task force is Charlie Hazo a.k.a. the Professor, who's survived a dozen swipes from death, & Peter Foxx a.k.a. the Little Buddha, whose noisy ambition & noisier dining habits preclude that "refined sexual act" he imagines himself capable of.

Even after the task force falters in Africa, the Little Buddha's still manuvering for open access to the White House & an office @the Pentagon: & to acquire all that, he agrees to be the killer's next target.

First published in 1981 in the shadow of Munich & Watergate, Savannah Blue is the tale of people succeeding despite themselves. Rounded out by Harrison's sparse, occasionally harsh (the lost, bewildered cop & the mamba attack) prose. No longer in print but worth the search.