Young, bright law student Stella lives high above Auckland harbour in uneasy luxury with Stuart, a powerful lawyer with a past who seems to specialise in violent death. The couple's already highly charged erotic relationship enters a new and dangerous phase when they take on the case of Carlos Lehmann - a half-Maori incomer to a remote bush territory who is driven to murder, and who Stella finds both frightening and fascinating. Richly sensuous, crackling with tension and black humour, yet at the same time moving and humane, PROVOCATION is a terrifying analysis of obsessive love and a thriller of extraordinary power and intelligence.