A darkening stain

A stylish, tough and exciting thriller set in West Africa, the fourth in Robert Wilson's critically acclaimed Bruce Medway series. Bruce Medway, fixer for the great unfixed, does not see the disappearance of schoolgirls off the streets of Cotonou as any of his business. That is the domain of his ex-partner, police detective Bagado. Bruce has the more pressing matter of a visit from two mafiosi, employees of the Lagos-based capo, Roberto Franconelli. They want him to find Jean-Luc Marnier, a French businessman, who is definitely in for more than a wrist-slapping. In a night of brutal terror with Marnier, Bruce finds himself with a choice to make, followed by a life-saving lie that has to be told. Both choice and lie will rumble over the rest of his days like the interminable rainy season. Then an eighth and very important schoolgirl goes missing and Bruce must descend into a morass of police corruption, mafia revenge, sexual depravity, and illegally mined gold ... To save himself, Bruce has to conceive a plan. A scam that will excite the natural greed that prevails along this coast and when executed will inevitably result in death and destruction. But then innocence has always been the burden of dark experience.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.