Tangled Web UK Review June 2009
The Desert Contract by
John Lathrop
hbk out June 08
Published by John Murray
at £17.99
Not really a crime book, more a political thriller/romance, based in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, with a later excursion to Turkish Cyprus.
Steve Kemp is an American investment broker, who has returned to Al Khobar, a seedy Saudi oil town on the Gulf, near Bahrain. He had lived there years before and now meets Helen again, his old lover who is married to Harry, a commercial attaché at the American Embassy.
Their first clandestine meeting, a difficult business anyway given the Saudi ‘moral police’ activities, is disrupted by a sudden local revolution of Shias, trying to secede from the Sunni regime. They are caught in a battle in an apartment block, and barely survive, being rescued by American troops.
The affair continues, Harry remaining unaware, even though he is helping Steve with business contacts. Steve needs one big contract to set him up financially, so that he can retire and run away with Helen. Harry sets this up, with a rich Riyadh woman who wants to get her money out America, but she has a condition that the honest Steve is unwilling to accept, this being a percentage left in a Cypriot account which will help fund another revolt against the Saudis. The end has unexpected twists which questuions everyone’s loyalty.
Once again, the book benefits from being written by someone who knows the business and the country very well, the authenticity showing through.
One message seems clear to this reader, that the Middle East and Saudi in particular, is a good place to stay away from!
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
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