In the Company of Killers

February 1, 2021
International crime journalist Tom Klay closes in on his nemesis, ivory-smuggling kingpin Ras Botha, and finds that he's been asking all the wrong questions. Years ago, Klay was recruited as a CIA asset by Vance Eady, his editor in chief at The Sovereign (think National Geographic), ostensibly on his own terms. When Klay's obsession with Botha results in Klay's closest friend's death, Eady promises a series of missions that will take Botha down. While Klay is in the Philippines gathering intel on Botha's smuggling operation, however, The Sovereign is sold to a global tech powerhouse, the Perseus Group, and Eady retires. Terry Krieger, Perseus' founder, claims that his goal is to further The Sovereign's human-rights and conservation mission, but Klay's encounters with Perseus abroad say otherwise. With his future at The Sovereign questionable, Klay makes use of his reporter status and heads to Johannesburg to help a rogue prosecutor take on Botha's smuggling empire and a corruption case against South Africa's president. Too late, he realizes that he's underestimated the reach of Perseus' plot. Fans of both espionage and global crime thrillers will find a gem here: Klay is an introspective, flawed survivor who bends operative stereotypes, and the intersection of corporate greed, media, technology, and crime is chillingly current.

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April 1, 2021

DEBUT Tom Klay writes about crimes against endangered species in the pages of the acclaimed news journal The Sovereign. In Kenya, a plan to capture elephant poachers goes awry. Among the dead is Tom's longtime friend Bernard Lolosoli. Tom returns to Washington to find The Sovereign has been sold to Perseus Group, the largest supplier of paramilitary forces in the world. The company's motive isn't to better inform the public; it's to gain information to sell to foreign powers, especially the Chinese government, which Perseus sees as the sure victor of any future global confrontations. To cement its new relationship with China, Perseus sabotages the navigating system of a U.S. warship, leading to its sinking in confrontation with a Chinese vessel. It's a risky game. If exposed, Perseus's CEO would surely face charges of treason. Tom determines to bring him down. To succeed, he strikes a deal with the man most likely to have orchestrated his friend's murder; in war, the enemy of one's enemy is sometimes one's friend. The novel ends back in Kenya in a showdown at a game reserve. VERDICT Christy's credentials are excellent--National Geographic's former head of special investigations; his earlier nonfiction title The Lizard King--but Company doesn't quite make it, with a cookie-cutter plot and weak characterization.--David Keymer, Cleveland

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March 15, 2021
Elephants and humans alike face mortal danger in this tense, complex thriller set in Africa. Tom Klay is an American journalist in Kenya who writes about crimes against endangered species for the National Geographic-like magazine The Sovereign. Because of an earlier article he'd written, a ranger friend tells Klay, "everyone wants to see our famous elephant," Kenya's largest. That's good for tourism, but now criminals want to kill the heavily protected animal and "smuggle his tusks to China whole." Notorious poacher Ras Botha runs Africa's ivory trade and considers elephants mere "property" to be hunted at will. "An elephant is carrying two gravestones," Klay is told: "One for himself. One for his species." Gravestones are needed for people as well, as Botha takes violent exception to human interference. Klay is a multilayered character who grew up in a funeral home and is well enough acquainted with death to muse that life is an unwinnable case and that "hope was certainty's flirtatious cousin." He tells his lover, the wonderfully named career South African prosecutor Hungry Khoza, that he's not a good person because he'd caused a child's death in Indonesia. His magazine's editor-in-chief ropes Klay into moonlighting for the CIA. Then Perseus Group Media, a subsidiary of the "world's biggest private military company" and China's overseas security firm, buys out Klay's financially struggling employer. By the way, China's "Ultimate Silk Road Project" includes a planned highway through the heart of Kenya. There's also a treasonous U.S. Navy admiral caught in a "little sex ring" and a pedophile ivory trafficker who is also a peace negotiator. The child sex trafficking theme might have been developed further or omitted altogether, but readers will sense its pervasiveness. The author's experience as a special investigator for National Geographic informs this fast-moving debut novel. High marks for this one. Let's hope it's the beginning of a long series.

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