Overview
Ex-Scotland Yard cop Jake Moore’s career was cut short by a bullet; ten years later, he runs a game fishing business that is about to go broke. But old habits die hard, and when cerebral Mombasa detective Daniel Jouma—seemingly the only good policeman in a city where corruption is king—asks for his help in solving a baffling murder case, the two men find themselves drawn into a deadly conspiracy involving local hoodlums, murderous ex-pats, and a mysterious and psychopathic kingpin who presides over a sickening trade in innocent human life.
Set amid the five-star luxury and Third World squalor of Kenya’s east coast, Bait introduces a new and unique crime-busting double act, and sets Nick Brownlee apart as a hot new talent on the crime scene.
Editorials
Publishers Weekly
Murder piled on grisly murder drives British author Brownlee's uneven debut, a crime thriller set in contemporary Kenya, where expatriates and natives make their own destiny or are crushed by someone else's. Former Scotland Yard copper Jake Moore, co-owner of a marginal sport fishing outfit in Mombasa, owes an Arab oil dealer $17,000 for diesel fuel because the country's civil unrest has scared off "Ernies," "pale-faced tourists who came to Kenya in search of big fish." Jake; his fellow Brit partner, Harry Philliskirk; and Det. Insp. Daniel Jouma, possibly the only Kenyan cop not on the take, tangle with a variety of nasties, whose crisis-management skills are limited to personal disposal of their opponents. While the book occasionally provides terse, deadly insights into the local culture, it offers mostly predictable glimpses into the unsavory side of the dark continent. Still, Brownlee shows enough promise that readers can reasonably hope for more than just relentless brutality in the sequel. (July)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Reviews
Bodies pile up in east Kenya. Harry Philliskirk and Jake Moore, English ex-pats settled in Mombasa and running a losing proposition, Britannia Fishing Tours Ltd., need $17,000 to keep the Yellowfin afloat. While Harry is pummeled into accepting a cargo of illicit hash, Jake, a former member of Scotland Yard's Flying Squad, becomes enmeshed in the evisceration of another fishing-boat operator, Dennis Bentley. Hooks have barely been baited before the mysterious Whitestone, hopping from Amsterdam to Paris to Rome and beyond, sets in motion more murders-some low on the food chain, some higher up-for perceived infractions of loyalty. DI Daniel Jouma, of Coast Province CID, begins an investigation, but when it becomes obvious that members of his department are being paid off, he turns to Jake for backup. Also on hand is New York lawyer Martha Bentley, staying at the posh Marlin Bay Hotel while trying to avenge her dad. The trio quickly runs up against a local crime boss, the owner of a crocodile park, and even Martha's bond-trader boyfriend. Journalist Brownlee's debut features extravagantly macabre death sequences, a smattering of Kenyan political and social issues and a detective duo that suggests Bruce Willis paired with Maigret. A sequel is in the works.Kirkus Reviews
An evil development company declares war on its adversaries in Kenya.
In Mombasa, a septuagenarian nun is scourged 39 times until her heart gives out, and a retired Brit reels drunkenly toward a roof edge, then falls off. In New York, wealthy Martha Bentley, ignoring a phone message from an FBI agent, walks into her kitchen and runs into an assassin, who after dispatching her flies off to Kenya to hit another target. Fishing-boat skipper Jake Moore, devastated at the loss of his benefactor and romantic interest Martha, has no idea he may be headed for death as well. Meanwhile, the Jalawi natives cower in front of their huts when members of the Spurling security staff demonstrate just how awful their lives will become if they don't accede to the Spurling offer to buy their land for a five-star hotel complex, while Detective Inspector Daniel Jouma, Kenya CID, must bide his time when an incompetent higher-up insists he has resolved the Brit's leap. He's wrong, of course, and his error leads to more death, including that of Clay Spurling, whose reprobate son Bobby imagines himself fit to take over his father's land-development empire. Arson, sniper shots, stiletto thrusts and trips through the Mombasa sewers and outlying crocodile swamps complicate matters. Jouma and Jake (Bait, 2009) are dinged up pretty badly, but survive.
Only those with a taste for overblown carnage are likely to stay to the end.