From the terrorist camps of Mozambique to the cloistered halls of Cambridge and beyond, The Flamingo Room moves with breathtaking speed to its violent conclusion back where it all began, in the remote corner of Zimbabwe’s great game reserve of Ghona re Zhou – place of the elephants.
It has been called the archaeological myth of the century, but to Chris Ryan, part-time soldier, tracker, pilot and owner of a game sanctuary, the age-old controversy and discovery of some ancient papyri was the last thing on his mind. Then his wife is murdered by terrorists and the trail to find those responsible reaches across the world.
It is 962 BC and the dawn of the golden years for King Solomon who is at the pinnacle of power. He has few enemies other than the exiled Prince Hadad of Edom, whose men harass Solomon’s tax inspectors on the silk road and plunder the caravans. With Phoenician pilots provided by his friend King Hiram of Tyre, Solomon’s ships and agents ply the coasts of the Narrow Sea, trading from Egypt to Saba and around the horn of Africa, hugging the treachorous coast as far as Opone and Serapio.
Solomon’s promise to his father to build a temple in his honour is about to be realised, although he is still unaware that it will be constructed of gold. Gold he does not have.
Then on a small island across a narrow stretch of sea from Tyre, the son of a local potter stumbles, naked, into the presence of the niece of King Hiram and the course of history is changed. It is a meeting that sets the participants onto a forbidden path, risking dishonour and death. But other forces are at work that will forge their lives, and the lives of many others at the farthest reaches of the known world. The forces of greed and revenge, of passion, obsession, loyalty, and love strong enough to span the voids of distance and time.
The owners of a wildlife sanctuary involved with darting and translocating endangered black rhinos from Zimbabwe to Australia, find themselves pitted against poachers and the might of a Chinese multinational.
Intent on cornering the world market in rhino horn, Their agent in Zimbabwe employs poachers and bribes high government officials, but has seriously underestimated a former Mugabe terrorist, Eliot Gumbo, self-confessed spy and God-fearing anti poacher.
In a page-turning action thriller, drama, humour, kidnapping and political skulldugery abound. So too, the worthier attributes of romance,love and forgivness. Attributes possessed not only by man, but also by wild animals.
Lured by the promise of riches when diamonds are discovered at the Vaal River in 1870, Charles Atherstone, a threadbare poster artist from a Brighton carnival, joins the rush, only to find on arrival at Cape Town that he has insufficient funds to pay the coach fare to the diggings – a journey of some seven hundred miles. An unsuspecting dreamer, he is the perfect mark for Fleetwood Erskine Tucker, a gentleman thief from London who is also in the colony to make his fortune, but who finds himself suddenly with a more pressing need to escape the local law.
An exciting, often both hazardous and humerous twin jouney of Charles and Fleetwood, their adventures and trials in the rugged wilderness of the Kalahari, their frantic search along with thousands of other hopefulls for diamonds along the Vaal River diggings. A colorful parade of characters in the byegone days of ox-wagons, coaches, waxed moustaches and mutton chops. A tangle of Boers, wild baboons, wild Bushmen and occassionally even wilder diggers. But at its heart it is a story of rich emotions and love.