The Leopard's Prey

November 3, 2008
Spunky Jade del Cameron, animal wrangler, photojournalist and neophyte pilot, predictably tames man and beast in Arruda's middling fourth mystery set in 1920 Kenya (after 2008's The Serpent's Daughter
). When a local merchant's body turns up on a coffee plantation, the authorities deem it a case of murder. The chief suspect is Sam Featherstone, wounded American war hero, now filmmaker and Jade's flying mentor, who torments Jade with that age-old female dilemma, marriage or independence. In between solving crimes and rescuing baby animals, Jade laments the passing of old Africa and promotes nascent African independence. Her charming cheetah, Biscuit, and Jade's indomitable can-do spirit reinforce the author's relish for describing the Kenyan landscape, its animal life and its native Kikuyu and Masai tribesmen, saving this otherwise conventional novel from banality.

November 1, 2008
The most dangerous animals in Nairobi circa 1920 are the two-legged kind.

After unraveling a kidnapping plot in Morocco (The Serpent 's Daughter, 2008, etc.), Jade del Cameron has returned to her beloved Kenya Colony to help friends at the Perkins and Daley Zoological Company rescue wild animals that, if not captured for transfer to zoos, would fall prey to hunters. She 's particularly interested in a pair of rare leopards. Jade 's attempts to capture the wild cats are immortalized on film by Sam Featherstone, a World War I flying ace turned moviemaker and, not incidentally, Jade 's boyfriend. The globetrotting adventuress teases her friend Madeline Thompson about Maddy 's overheated but bestselling adventure novels, with titles like Ivory Blood and Stalking Death. The mood turns dark, however, when Sam discovers a corpse in the Thompsons ' coffee dryer. The dead man is Martin Stokes, owner of Stokes and Berryhill Store in Nairobi, the very man who sold Maddy and her husband Neville the coffee dryer. Stokes ' wife Alice has recently gone missing; an ad placed in the local paper, presumably by Stokes, seeks help in finding her. When Sam is implicated as Stokes ' killer, plucky Jade, whose interests include flying airplanes and taking photographs, turns sleuth once more. A dangerous plane crash thickens the plot for the supporting cast of colorful colonials who serve as suspects.

A lively mystery adventure with a strong sense of both its historical period and its exotic locale.

(COPYRIGHT (2008) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

December 15, 2008
Intrepid journalist and adventuress Jade Del Cameron is in Nairobi, Kenya, helping to capture wild animals for American zoos. When a man's body is found on her friends' coffee plantation, Jade and her boyfriend, movie producer and World War I pilot Sam Featherstone, are the prime suspects. Then someone attacks Sam. Courageous, quick-thinking, straight-talking Jade must find the murderer before more people die. In her fourth mystery set in 1920s East Africa ("Mark of the Lion; Stalking Ivory; The Serpent's Daughter"), Arruda depicts a world in which encroaching colonial civilization is beginning to cost the wild animals their homes and racial tensions between British settlers and the natives are escalating. Great characters, careful plotting, and an unusually beautiful depiction of Africa make this a good choice for all mystery collections.

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2008
Though she carries a rifle instead of a parasol-sword and lives in colonial Africa instead of Egypt, Jade del Cameron is surely a literary cousin to Amelia Peabody, Elizabeth Peters amateur sleuth and champion of womens rights. Yet readers expecting Peabodys calm deliberation are in for a surprise. Jade shoots, twirls a lariat, pilots a plane, and rides a motorcycle better than most of the men she encounters in the British protectorate where she livesand she routinely uses all of those skills to solve the mysteries that come her way. This time, its murder, and its the romantic interest in Jades life, mustachioed American Sam Featherstone, who is in trouble. A local merchant with a dubious reputation has been murdered, and Sam was seen arguing with him. Jade knows Sam is innocent, but on the way to proving it, she manages to crash-land a plane, find a missing woman, and come face-to-face with a very angry leopard. Can such a superwoman be tamed? Sam wants to try, but is Jade ready?(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)