An African Affair

May 2, 2011
Reporter Darnton draws on her five years in Africa for her less than successful debut novel, the first in a thriller series. In 1994, gutsy American journalist Lindsay Cameron, a foreign correspondent for the New York Globe, joins the paper's new full-time bureau in Nigeria at an extremely turbulent time. Dissidents are challenging the country's military dictator, Gen. Michael Olumide, whose repressive regime is funded by narcotics trafficking. While trying to expose Olumide's campaign against his opponents without running afoul of the authorities, Lindsay gets a respite from her grueling job in the person of James Duncan, an art gallery owner in search of West African art to purchase, who proves a potential love interest. Meanwhile, the CIA must regroup after the murder of their most valuable agent in Nigeria. While the portrayal of endemic corruption compels (almost every transaction requires a bribe), stock situations and a plot development that most readers will anticipate many chapters ahead of the lead character erode the hard-edged realism.