A Darkening Stain (Bruce Medway Series #4) »

ROBERT WILSON is the author of nine previous novels, including A Small Death in Lisbon and The Company of Strangers. A graduate of Oxford University, he has worked in shipping, advertising, and trading in Africa, and has lived in Greece and West Africa.

When schoolgirls begin to disappear on the West African coast, "troubleshooter" Bruce Medway tries to remain detached. Meanwhile, he reluctantly acquires a new job from former nemesis and mafia capo Franconelli. Franconelli gives Bruce forty-eight hours to find a French trader, Mariner, whom not even the mafia has been able to track. Yet as Bruce sets out on his assignment, he is unable to remain disconnected from the mysterious schoolgirl disappearances, and finds that girls, gold, and greed are all interconnected; corruption abounds everywhere. There are no safe havens for Bruce in this situation, and he must devise a scam that risks everything in order to stay alive.

A brilliant follow-up to Blood is Dirt, and the fourth novel in the Bruce Medway series, A Darkening Stain takes Bruce Medway into the darkest territory of West Africa yet.

A Harvest Original

Publishers Weekly

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. (July) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.