Black Money

Jonathan Grimes, a weak-willed American teacher, is given to gambling and drinking. In the Kenya of 1970, these traits put him heavily in debt, and render him vulnerable to blackmail by Bimji, an Asian shopkeeper whose income is garnered from highly profitable ivory poaching. The insecure Grimes agrees under duress to take Bimji's fortune in illegal ""black money'' out of the country, a task that seems simple at first but soon becomes complicated when Grimes's companion is murdered and his girlfriend Ellen is kidnapped. Grimes, Ellen and Bimji are unwitting pawns in an ever-widening circle of government corruption that reaches to the Home Minister, Charles Mathenge, a man of such concentrated power and unprincipled greed that he seems to be beyond the law. But police inspector Jacob Okiri, disarmingly honest and straightforward, doggedly follows lead after lead, ultimately confronting Grimes, Mathenge and Bimji on a deserted Kenyan beachfront for a violent finale. Set against a vivid, pungent East African background, this first novel by a former Peace Corps volunteer is a strong study of power that corrupts at every level and of idealism that persists. (June 30)