Given the scope of her work--investigating murders, missing persons, safari accidents, and tangled multinational affairs in the face of such obstacles as lions, famine, kidnappers, and tribal warfare--James takes adventure and insight into territory barely imaginable to the rest of us. The result is a stunning quartet of tales of her most memorable adventures. In the opening story, "Detour," James travels to Mombasa, Kenya, to determine whether the death of a remarkable coffee plantation owner was suicide or murder and to hunt for a missing inheritance. Along the way she discovers a mysterious, top-secret school in the jungle. On a "pleasure" trip to Rwanda to see mountain gorillas, accompanied by a morose American teenager, James is caught in gorilla-poaching crossfire and faces the sort of impossible questions Africa so frequently poses--whose life is more valuable, that of an African child or a baby gorilla? In Beira, a coastal city in Mozambique, she and her friend David are given one day to search for David's missing mother and sister while the Russians pull out, guerrilla fighters approach, and a mass demonstration circles the wreckage. And in the final dramatic story, James just barely survives renegade Turkana warriors, 120-degree heat, starvation, crocodiles, broken ribs, and a head injury in the search for the lost Dr. Kali, an English-educated Turkana witchdoctor. James is truly an audacious explorer--skilled not only in a number of languages but also in living with almost nothing and in the most hostile of environments. She is also tough on her clients. However, just when you think you're reading nothing more than a very good mystery, complete with colorful international characters and whodunit conundrums, accompanied by a woman long on smarts and balls but short on compassion, she thrusts you squarely into the heart of Africa, where it is impossible not to feel deeply. These are haunting stories written by a remarkable woman who knows not only how to live a life of risk, but how to tell a terrific story. --Lesley Reed From Publishers Weekly "I investigate safari, ship and plane accidents as well as murders and thefts and I search for missing persons," explains international private investigator James. In this ambitious but somewhat uneven debut, she combines mystery, literary memoir and adventure tale, achieving elements of all but mastering none. With a colorful cast of characters, from Kumlesh the "alchemist" and Hitesh the guru to Ensign Basso, "hero" and sometime lover, and Captain Daniel MacKinnon, skipper of the boat that shuttles James on some of her journeys, the stories have some truly fine moments of high adventure and peril. Sometimes stiff, her prose occasionally glitters with vivid descriptions and a hint of magic realism. Readers accompany James on an unauthorized mountain gorilla trek in Rwanda as chaperone to an extremely annoying young man, and travel to Nairobi to investigate the alleged suicide of a plantation owner; to war-torn Beira, Mozambique, in search of the almost certainly dead sister and mother of a friend; and to "hell on earth," Turkanaland in northern Kenya, to find a missing witchdoctor, in the seemingly endless title story.

The stories are intriguing, and take readers places that many of them will never go and paints an intimate portrait of the diverse and fascinating cultures coexisting on the African continent. As such, it can be treated as a kind of safari: parts of the journey may be difficult, but in the end, they are worth the ride.

 William Morrow & Company 0060186275 / 9780060186272
Hardcover New New book Jacket New York 

Price: 16.07 USD