Danger Woman

May 23, 2016
Ramsay’s third mystery set in Botswana (after 2010’s Reapers) tries too hard to mirror its human story line with a subplot featuring the country’s animals. One night in Chobe National Park, Ole Anderson, an expert on hyena behavior who’s leading a group of trustees from the foundation that funds his research, spots a human skull after witnessing a group of hyenas chasing off a lone lion. Ole brings the grim discovery to park ranger Sanderson, now superintendent of her district, who has been dealing with a “rash of deaths, bodies, and/or their separated parts appearing in her park.” Kgabo Modise, her policeman friend from Gaborone, believes the bloodshed to be the product of the plans of the Russian gang the Bratva to expand their influence into the country. The Bratva are led by Irena Davidova, a sex-trafficking victim turned master manipulator, who’s the danger woman of the title. (The female leader of the hyena pack is also dangerous.) Modise and Sanderson’s efforts to thwart Davidova lack suspense and plausibility.

May 1, 2016
A Chobe National Park ranger tangles with the Russian Mafia. "Bodies in the park was a very bad thing for the animals," reflects Ranger Superintendent Kgopa Sanderson after naturalist Ole Andersen finds his favorite spotted hyena worrying a human skull. Superintendent Mwambe, of the Kasane police, is less than thrilled by her report if it requires him to leave his comfortable office to investigate. So he and Sanderson (Predators, 2010) are both happy to learn that the authorities in Gaborone are sending a team to assist. Joseph Ikanya isn't happy to leave behind a pregnant wife for the thankless job of babysitting Mwabe. But Kgabo Modise is keen on the hunt. He hopes for a chance to take down the goons from the Bratva who are infiltrating Botswana's fledgling casino industry and reunite with Sanderson. Modise's main target is Oleg Lenka, a midlevel thug whose consort, Irena Davidova, dreams of spurring him to greater wealth and power in Africa than he could have possibly attained in St. Petersburg. But Lenka's henchman, Yuri Greshenko, may provide an easier entry to the Bratva. While Anderson continues to stalk Kotsi Mosadi, the hyena pack leader known as "Danger Woman," in the bush, Sanderson and Modise trail Lenka and Irena to picturesque Mowano Lodge, where the law of the jungle is beginning to gain the upper hand. Ramsay, whose series covers the globe from first-century Jerusalem to Picketsville, Virginia, makes the most of local color in his final Botswana entry.

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May 1, 2016
This final installment (following Reapers, 2011, and Predators, 2009) in Ramsay's Botswana trilogy could have been titled Poachers. The novel begins with a disturbing view afforded some tourists crammed into a Land Rover at nighta pack of spotted hyenas circling a lioness, eager to poach her fresh kill. The leader of the pack is called Kotsi Mosadi, Tswana for Danger Woman. There's been more fresh kill scattered throughout the Chobe Game Park over the past few months, numerous human bodies left in the wilderness, dismissed by the authorities as suicide by lion. And behind these murders is another kind of poacher, members of the Russian Mafia, eager to move in on the Botswana tourist trade. This group has its own Danger Woman in the form of the head mobster's mistress. Ramsay generates a great deal of tension throughout, with the police investigators baffled and thwarted by the Russians at almost every step. An exciting mystery, enhanced by the overarching theme of poaching, as rampant in the human world as it is among animals.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)