Reapers: A Botswana Mystery »

Dr. Frederick Ramsay was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He received his doctorate from the University of Illinois-Westside Medical Campus. After a stint in the Army, he joined the faculty of the University of Maryland, School of Medicine, teaching Anatomy, Embryology and Histology; engaged in research and also served as an Associate Dean. During this time he also pursued studies in theology and in 1971 was ordained an Episcopal priest. He is the author of several scientific and general articles, tracts, theses, and co-author of The Baltimore Declaration. He is an accomplished public speaker and once hosted a television spot, Prognosis, on the evening news for WMAR-TV, Baltimore. He is also an iconographer with works displayed around the world. He lives in Surprise, Arizona with his wife and partner, Susan.

The World Cup, which arrives in June, has ripple effects on all South Africa’s neighbors. The arrival of soccer fans, team owners, sponsors, and world dignitaries makes southern Africa, particularly Botswana, ripe for all sorts of intrigue and illicit activities. The American Secretary of State will visit the Chobe. The North Koreans, the Okavango, Arabs, French, Chinese, and Russians are scattered among the various lodges and hotels in the country before, during and after the games. And all will be watching and waiting on the others.

Orgonise Africa, derived from Wilhelm Reich’s popularization of orgone energy and transmogrified by bad science and wishful thinking, is an effort by fanatics to push forward a plan to seed Africa with orgone, which they believe will purify the continent, rid it of drought, poverty, and HIV/AIDs.

To the north, Patriarche, a silverback mountain gorilla, is forced to share his habitat with coltan miners led by General Le Grande, one of the Congo’s many bloody war lords. The profits from the sale of coltan, so prized by electronics manufacturers, help fuel the seemingly endless civil wars that plague that poor country.

Sanderson, the Game Ranger in the Chobe National Park, finds a body. Tracking down the murderer opens doors that lead her and Inspector Kgabo Modise first to evidence of local bribery, then to smuggling, and finally to what could well provoke an international incident, except for the shrewd action of Modise and Botswana’s intelligence community.

Library Journal

As the World Cup is set to begin in South Africa, there are attempts to bug the rooms of visiting dignitaries in neighboring Chobe, Botswana. There is also a push to smuggle into Africa orgone, an energy source thought up by Wilhelm Reich in the 20th century. The group involved in the smuggling believes that orgone energy will purify the African continent and rid it of its economic and social problems. When a man is murdered in the Chobe National Park, park ranger Sanderson (first introduced in Predators) must investigate the crime and determine why there are so many mysterious comings and goings of unauthorized people in the park. VERDICT Like Alexander McCall Smith's Precious Ramotswe, Sanderson is a delightful sleuth, although her Botswana is more rougher edged than Precious's. In Sanderson's quiet way, she goes about her job, cares for her terminally ill son, fields her daughter's teasing, and finds a bit of romance.