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The last person Ray Sharp wants to see again is his wife Sylvia. Yet here she is, on his porch, wanting a major favor from him. He‛s not inclined to do her any favors; she‛s been uncooperative with his desire for a divorce. Her willingness to trade the favor for some cooperation seems like a reasonable deal. All Ray has to do is find her fiance, Alexander Lee Truscott. He‛s been sent to Sumatra from Texas by his family to learn another aspect of the oil business that makes them all rich. Ray takes his picture and whatever relevant information Sylvia has. Ray‛s day job is investigation for DDI, Due Diligence Investigations. He‛s in Jakarta, working on a report for a Hong Kong investment bank. They want to know more about Motex, a big oil and gas company, and also about Lucky Break, an Australian mining company. Motex and Lucky Break are connected; Ray used to work for Motex. It should be easy enough for Ray to find out if there‛s any truth to the rumor about a major gold strike somewhere near a Motex oil field. The two investigations inevitable overlap. Alex was working for Motex, and being paid by Lucky Break, when he wrote up the report. This isn‛t kosher, even in corrupt Jakarta. There are rumors of a person being pushed out of a helicopter into the jungle; that person remains nameless and unfound. The presumption is that it‛s Alex, but Ray can‛t prove it one way or the other. In the process, Ray gets beat up more than once, locked up more than once, and collects his usual assortment of women anxious to sleep with him. Sort of an ex-pat James Bond, only not quite so glamorous. What makes this all work so wonderfully is not just Stone‛s familiarity with the region. He takes a real scandal (the Bre-X gold fraud of 1997) and makes it his own. He takes Ray Sharp, a man all too aware of his frailties and flaws, and uses those flaws to bring the reader fully into Ray‛s world. While not always a pretty place, it is a place that Ray loves; we learn more about why he loves it in each book. Ray knows he makes lousy choices in women; he still chooses, and lives with those choices. Ray knows the culture he walks through is corrupt; he walks anyway, doing his best to make it a little better. While it is in no way necessary to read the series in order, the character development alone makes the effort worthwhile.
Reviewed by P.J. Coldren, July 2008
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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