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Society Newsletter
No. 77,
November/December 2000
Veronica
Li's Nightfall in Mogadishu
Reviewed by Anne Vaughn
Veronica Li, last seen in the Bank's
East Africa Department before her retirement, has turned
her writing skills to fiction. She has made good use
of her Bank experience in general and of her work in
Somalia in particular to write a tale of action and
adventure, Nightfall in Mogadishu.
She is also being adventurous herself in testing the
waters of the new computer technology for her first
novel. Nightfall in Mogadishu is currently appearing
as an e-book that can be downloaded onto a diskette
and printed out. It is also available as a print-on-demand
book, which is not only printed but bound before being
delivered to the purchaser. The publisher is 1stBooks
Library, and the book, in either form, may be purchased
at www.Istbooks.com. If you have never read an e-book
before, Veronica's thriller is a good place to start.
Her story is set in the year 1990, just at the time
that Somalia began its disintegration into anarchy and
chaos. It is an ideal backdrop for an adventure tale
with non-stop action. There is plenty of murder and
mayhem not to mention evil, corruption and a little
sex thrown in for good measure. Susan Chen, CIA agent
undercover at the World Bank, is on her first major
case which involves the death in suspicious circumstances,
of Andrew Barnett, the World Bank Resident Representative
in Mogadishu. The police, the UNDP Office in charge
of security, and the World Bank view the death as no
more than a tragic accident, but Susan and the CIA know
better. They know but are keeping quiet about a nearly
invisible wound found on the body at the base the neck
that is the hallmark of a known terrorist and assassin,
Hamid. The question is, who hired Hamid and why?
Susan has little difficulty getting the job as Barnett's
replacement -there are no other applicants. Once in
Somalia, she soon discovers that there is something
fishy going on with the foreign exchange auction and
that her predecessor, at the time of his death, had
been looking into the
activities of a firm going by the name of Eastern Horizon
who appear to be doing exceptionally well at the auction.
When she starts asking questions about it, she meets
a wall of wary silence. As her investigations continue,
the death toll mounts and Susan finds herself caught
up in a maelstrom of high-level corruption and violence.
Veronica's knowledge of Somalia shows in the vivid
and memorable images she draws of this hot and arid
land and its long-suffering people. Those who have worked
in Somalia will immediately recognize scenes and landmarks
and those who have never been there will feel as if
they had. Her characters, too, are sharply drawn. She
presents a widely varied sampling of recognizable types
in the development field, each one fleshed out and distinctive.
She is not always kind to the World Bank or its staff,
and is especially hard on those she portrays as having
lost sight of development goals in their efforts at
advancement and self-aggrandizement. I found myself
trying to guess at the real life models of many of her
characters, but Veronica insists that they are all fictional,
a distillation of the many people and traits that she
has encountered over the years.
Her characters, sometimes even quite minor ones, are
well developed and believable; and she seems to have
a special touch with villains-they are characters you
just love to hate. But she captures, too, the courage
and warmth of the Somali people as well as the commitment
and basic decency of those who have tried, however unsuccessfully,
to help them. And Susan Chen may be a gutsy CIA agent
doing in the enemy with her bare hands (with a little
help from a table leg and a hat pin), but she is an
agent with a heart of gold and a keen interest in development
issues. I am looking forward to her next adventure.
Somalia: Inspiration for
a Novel
About Viking Voyager: An Icelandic Memoir
About Confucius Says
About Journey Across the
Four Seas
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