June 7, 2004
Best known for his Gold Dagger Award– winning A Small Death in Lisbon
(2000), Wilson powerfully evokes West Africa in his fourth novel to feature PI Bruce Medway. An intricate web of intrigue, treachery and violence begins with five missing schoolgirls, ranging from age six to 10, and the request (i.e., demand) of a local Mafioso, Roberto Franconelli, to find a man named Marnier so he can kill him. Medway complies because he knows that if he doesn't, he'll wind up dead, too (he had run-ins with Franconelli in the third book in the series, Blood Is Dirt
, reviewed above). The human trafficking is a particularly horrible story: the girls are sought by rich men in the mistaken belief that sex with a virgin will rid them of AIDS, and the plot broadens to include a large amount of stolen gold and an almost infinite stream of corruption. The expansive cast of sharply drawn characters includes good guys and bad, Europeans and Africans. The intricacy of motive—who's doing what to whom and why—can make the narrative difficult to follow, but the core drivers—sexual desire and greed—are all too powerfully portrayed.