ROBUST discussion

AFRICAN REVENGE by Andrew McCoy

(latest edition at http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00GYA5DNE -- looks like Goodreads hasn't yet caught on -- you want the ebook with the tasty crocodile on the cover)

Lance Weber has a brilliant future in international rugby but he makes the dangerous mistake of running up a huge gambling debt. When the debt is called, and reinforced by the chilling threat of casual mutilation, Lance is in trouble. His only way out is to make a lot of money, and to make it fast.

In desperation, Lance turns to his brother Ewart, an ex-mercenary with a reputation for ferocious efficiency. With his colleague, Colonel Roux, Ewart has acquired a concession to kill crocodiles along the Congo border and to market the skins. Lance, who harbors romantic notions of a hunting party on safari, agrees to go along. He is in for a series of shocks.

To his horror, Lance finds himself embroiled in a ruthless operation that traverses the face of Africa like a mobile small-scale war. Throughout the brutal journey, Lance has to learn a series of new and frightening skills — or die. As the party fights to blast a fortune out of Africa, the continent exacts its own bitter revenge.

Andrew McCoy’s two earlier novels, ATROCITY WEEK and THE INSURRECTIONIST, roused violent controversy. With a talent for narrative that moves at a scorching pace, McCoy matches his unique authority — expertise won from experience — to a profound appreciation of the beauty and cruelty of Africa itself. The blend is electrifying.

— John Blackwell

The HARD MAN OF AFRICA series consist of the three Lance Weber novels Secker & Warburg published in hardcover to international acclaim, plus two brand-new novels CoolMain Press commissioned from me. All five will be published in chronological order. See http://coolmainpress.com/mccoylancewe...

REVIEWS
from the
international quality press
for
AFRICAN REVENGE
by
Andrew McCoy

"Mr McCoy gets on with the job of telling us exactly what it is like in the Heart of Darkness. He has the soldier's eye for terrain and the soldier's eye for character. This has the ring of truth."
John Braine/author of Room at the Top/Sunday Telegraph

"Very rough, exciting, filmic, and redolent of a nostalgie de boue d'Afrique. Full of the rapport and affection for blacks experienced only by the genuine old Africa hand."
Alastair Phillips/Glasgow Herald

"Like the unblinking eye of a cobra, it is fascinating and hard to look away from, powerful and unique."
Edwin Corley/Good Books

"I found this work excellent. I recommend it as a book to read on several planes, whether of politics, history or just as thriller — every episode is firmly etched on my memory. It is certainly a most impressive work of fiction."
"H.P."/BBC External Service

"Like a steam hammer on full bore."
Jack Adrian/Literary Review

"Something else again. The author has plenty of first-hand experience of the conditions he describes so vividly."
Marese Murphy/Irish Times

"Totally convincing fiction."
Colonel Jonathan Alford, Director, Institute for Strategic Studies/BBC World at One

"The reader is in good hands."
Kirkus Reviews

"Even in an entertaining thriller he makes us see ourselves anew."
La Prensa

"Graphic adult Boys Own Adventure."
The Irish Press

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AFRICAN REVENGE by ANDREW MCCOY: Internationally acclaimed thriller hits ebooks for first time, starts series - http://bit.ly/1c46DEv

Sounds very hard core!

J.A. wrote: "Sounds very hard core!"

That goes without saying. John Braine, the British novelist and teacher of creative writing (Room at the Top, etc) said something to the effect that Andrew writes about places he's been to that Braine wouldn't go without air cover.

No offense to to the fine Mr. McCoy, but I think this is a book I'll pass over just because, quite frankly, reading about that part of the world depresses me for long periods. I can handle man's horror to man when it's a bit more historic by lying to myself and saying, "Well, that was a long time ago, so it's not quite the same thing right," but the more contemporary stuff always socks me hard, and so I really have to be in the right mood.

Heck, I've edited epidemiology papers about sub-Saharan Africa populations and that's depressing enough.

Yes, I am soft. I fully admit this.

One of Andrew's Lance Weber books, coming a couple or three away, is LANCE of GOD, which Sarah Dixon and I have been re-editing. It's about delivering food to the sub-Saharan victims of famine. You'd be surprised how many of their fellow-Africans don't want them fed. And a new novel from him which Lynne Comery and I have been editing for first publication, ROOTS OF VIOLENCE, is about the continuing slave trade in those parts.

But you're probably right. Andrew's novels are highly realistic and likely too truthful for many. I can still remember the cold shock of... well, I'll let readers discover for themselves.

I grew up always thinking the things were pretty bad in that part of the world, but then I started doing serious research when I first went to college, and I was like, "What? I thought it was terrible to begin with and in many of these countries its ten times as awful as I already believed!"

I bet if you went there, you'd undergo another catharsis, because it is worse than even that, probably by a magnitude or two. This is one of the reasons Andrew's books are so highly regarded by people who have some understanding of the region: they deliver a reliable introduction to the horrors without actually risking your life by going there.

#5stars "A cracking read" — Grant MacNeill on AFRICAN REVENGE by Andrew McCoy. http://amzn.to/1eACNKr #RT

African Revenge