The good guys despise Marc Royce as a mercenary cashing in on the crisis caused when a Kenyan volcano erupts in a drought zone; the bad guys despise him as an accountant with no African experience. They’re both wrong. He’s been sent to find out why corrupt officials are seizing apparently worthless tribal lands and evicting the people by force, and why anyone caught asking questions has either died or disappeared. It’s a brutal world where life is disposable and expediency everything. Nobody trusts anyone – usually with good cause – but an unlikely alliance is forged of natural enemies whose only common ground is allegiance to Jesus Christ and a determination to find out what’s wrong and put it right. This is a full-blooded, uncompromising thriller with non-stop action, genuine suspense and a Christian heart. The characters are recognisably human and, for the most part, not stereotypical; the hero’s past is touched upon but not wallowed in, neither is there a pat, saccharine ending. I was unfamiliar with Davis Bunn before reading this, but I will certainly read more of his work. Thoroughly recommended.

Ex-intelligence officer Marc Royce has been on another undercover mission, this time to Africa to audit the accounts of a relief organization. His real purpose, however, is related to the region's rare metal resources, which make it a target for the high-tech industry, warring tribes, and terrorists. While doing the job he was sent to do, he teams up with an Israeli medical administrator in the hopes of bringing relief to the troubled area. VERDICT Readers who were introduced to Royce in Lion of Babylon will be glad for this new adventure, in which they will get to know him even better. and especially readers of Travis Thrasher.