“Edgar Award winner Thomas Cook has a string of beautifully written and elegantly plotted thrillers to his name. A Dancer in the Dust is one of his best ever. This lush story combines current events and a wonderfully realized love story.” —Globe and Mail
Twenty years ago, Ray Campbell, now a cautious risk-management consultant, was a well-intentioned aid worker dedicated to improving conditions in Lubanda, a newly independent African country. He is forced to reconsider that year of living dangerously when a friend from his time in Lubanda is found murdered in a New York alley. Signs suggest that this most recent tragedy is rooted in the far more distant one of Martine Aubert, the only woman Ray ever truly loved and whose fate he’d sealed in a moment of grievous error: “In Lubanda, twenty years before, I’d rolled the dice for a woman who was not even present at the table, and on the outcome of that toss, a braver and more knowing heart than mine had been forfeited.”
Martine Aubert was a white, native Lubandan farmer whose dream for her homeland starkly conflicted with those responsible for its so-called development. But Ray’s failure to understand Martine’s commitment to her country had placed a noose around her neck, one tightened by a circle of vicious men, cruel taunts, and whistling machetes. It is Ray’s return to the passion he’d once felt for Martine that makes A Dancer in the Dust the enthralling and moving story of two loves: Ray’s love for Martine Aubert, and Martine’s love for a homeland that did not love her back.
“Cook excels at merging contemporary and past storylines into one narrative, and it’s no different here: Ray is haunted by his time spent in the fictional African country of Lubanda 20 years earlier. . . . Cook masterfully captures the tumultuous state of a country in upheaval.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Edgar Award winner Thomas Cook has a string of beautifully written and elegantly plotted thrillers to his name. A Dancer in the Dust is one of his best ever. This lush story combines current events and a wonderfully realized love story.” —Globe & Mail
“[A] very readable genre-twisting thriller/love story/crime novel that will captivate readers from the start to the finish. I’m putting this novel on my imaginary list of the 10 best books of 2014.” —David M. Kinchen, Huntington News
“Thomas H. Cook . . . [is a] masterful crime novelist whose style in his latest book has a suggestion of Graham Greene.” —Toronto Star
“[The] two time periods are brilliantly balanced . . . Cook remains one of the most accomplished writers in the crime/thriller genre . . . His is a talent cherished by the cognoscenti, but whose name for many is still unfamiliar. This new novel, both love story and astringent vision of modern Africa, may change all that.” —Financial Times (UK)
“Ends with a scene of such touching beauty A Dancer in the Dust might be one of the very best of Cook’s remarkable career. Compelling, engrossing, and beautiful.” —Crime Time (UK)
“Multifaceted . . . beautifully written . . . Cook’s account is brutal and searing, but it is too well told, too compelling, and raises too many thorny social issues that bear examining to be set aside . . . Read it now!” —Seattle Book Mama Blog
“[A] profound novel.” —Steven Jay Griffel, Stay Thirsty Magazine
“[A Dancer in the Dust] is a story of great loss and one man’s chance at personal redemption, and it is very, very good. . . . Powerful. . . . Every time I had to put this book aside, I couldn’t wait to get back to it.” —Nancy Oakes, Crime Segments
“Not since John Le Carré’s The Mission Song have I seen such a loving and sorrowful portrait of modern Africa. . . . A dark read, but a worthwhile one.” —Salem Macknee, News & Observer (Raleigh)
“To paraphrase Winston Churchill, this novel is a mystery wrapped in a love story immersed in tragedy. . . . Totally consuming. . . . The book is written with grace and simplicity describing a complex narrative, and it is highly recommended.” —I Love a Mystery
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