This is the debut novel from a few years ago by a career Foreign Service officer. The book has two protagonists: Alex Baines of the State Dept. and Marie Tsiolo, a Congolese mining engineer. The setting is the Congo of about a decade ago, a country in the hands of a corrupt president and an American mining company that is totally without conscience or morals. Baines and Tsiolo save her village from Consolidated Mining's plans to strip mine an entire valley. Along the way, they join forces with a spurious CIA agent and a local warlord and oust the president in a bloodless coup.
I must admit that I pay little attention to sub-Saharan Africa and know next to nothing about all of the horror in that part of the world. This is a well-written thriller that along the way sheds some light on the conflicts as well as the culture of the region.
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