2009 # 25

Richard North Patterson - Eclipse - Finished - 2/16/2009

738 LP Pages

This is an international legal thriller with a chilling setting. If you read PattersonÕs Cross Country and remember the parts set in Africa, the you are slightly prepared for this one. Take a high powered US civil rights lawyer, add an old university love interest and her African husband, throw them all together in a not so fictitious African Oil rich dictatorship where the only law is that of the jungle and the fittest and best armed and you have the story a farcical trial of Bobby Okari, an outspoken advocate for improvement of his tribe in the oil devastated villages who has been arrested for the murder of 3 oil workers. His American wife, Marissa, appeals to her old university friend and lawyer Damon Pierce to defend him in a land where the courts are at the mercy of the leader General Savior Karama. This brings Damon to Luandia a country where street gangs kill indiscriminately, Rebels kidnap whites and oil executives, the police and army break more laws than they enforce and Oil has ruined the country side wracked in poverty. There you have it, a suspenseful thriller based on chilling real events and conditions and once started a stick to the end kind of book.

ISBN - 978-1-60751-480-0, Suspense, Pages - 384, Print Size - L, Rating - 4.5