On New Year’s
Eve if you had come up to me and told me that my favourite book of 2015 was
going to be an ‘ecological thriller’ set in Yemen I would have laughed my ass
off. In fact I would have rolled around in the snow laughing so hard that champagne
would have come out my nose. And then everybody would have figured out that I’d
been drinking. And then I would have assumed that you were drunk too. Really
drunk. Shitfaced drunk in fact. I would have got back up on my feet, lit the
rest of our fireworks and howled at the moon as you told me all about Claymore
Straker and his Middle East antics in the pursuit of truth, justice and the Yemeni
way. But I would have been wrong. And you my friend would have been very, very
right. This is probably one of the biggest surprises I’ve had reading for quite
some time.
An Afrikaans
speaking ex-member of the South African Army, Claymore Straker finds himself in
a very different field of work these days. He works the Yemeni oilfields doing
environmental impact studies and procuring drilling licenses for some new faceless
oil producing multinational. The locals are somewhat less endeared with his
company’s work ethics than the local tax officials are as they watch their
women and children dying from a mystery illness. So unimpressed in fact that Claymore
and his driver are kidnapped and he is made an offer he can’t refuse. He is to
uncover the cause of the sickness that is sweeping the community and publicise
his findings or he will never see his friend and driver Abdulkader alive again.
So he sets out on a mission to uncover what is happening to their water supply
and in the process finds lies, pain, suffering and horrendous crimes on an
international scale, and of course a girl. He is lied to, beaten up, shot at
and loses a couple of fingers. And that’s just the first night with the girl. Boy
oh boy!
The story is
action packed, brilliantly paced and written in a voice that you simply don’t
want to let go of. I found myself pulled back to its pages time and time again
as I hungered to know what was going to happen to Clay next. At 430 pages it is
a longer read than many other books I have read lately but is so beautifully
written that you won’t mind it’s length one bit. In fact by the end you’ll find
yourself wishing it was a little longer.
As I finished
the book last night and put it down reluctantly for the last time my attention was
instantly drawn to another tale of
unrest and injustice in the form of ‘Dirty Wars’ on RUV a real life tale
of illegal killings and sanctioned assassinations by the US’s JSOC forces. The
parallels are undeniable. The concerns of the Western world have literally
become a law unto themselves. The difference between the ways our laws were
written and the way they are now interpreted to suit the purposes of
governments or multinationals has become truly disturbing. Lives count for nothing
once they are viewed as an obstacle in the way of a money-making machine. It
isn’t surprising that the West is hated the way it is and the saddest part is
that we have brought this about ourselves.
When the sky is
torn
When the stars
are shattered
When the seas
are poured forth
When the tombs
are bust open
Then a soul
will know what is given
And what is
held back
So next New
Year’s Eve my resolution will be to not blow champagne bubbles out my nose and
to keep a much more open mind about what I will be reading in the year to come.
I could have missed out on ‘The Abrupt Physics of Dying’ and that would have
been a real tragedy.
