Ex- Soldier turned mercenary Sonja Kurt is on the run after her failed assassination attempt on the president of Zimbabwe. She heads for her only place of refuge, the Okavango Delta, in the heart of Botswana. Sonja is hoping to reconnect with childhood sweetheart, Sterling Smith and leave her brutal work as a contract warrior behind. But Sonja is plunged headlong into a diabolical mission by her former lover and commanding officer Martin Steele. Dropping right into the middle of Sonja's plight is TV heartthrob "Coyote" Sam Chapman who blunders out of the bush in a reality show gone-wrong. Instead of shedding her violent past, Sonja is surrounded by men whoa re relying on her killer instincts to save the day. Where she came to find peace, she finds war... and its not just the Delta that is at stake.
The Delta
The Delta, Tony Park's seventh novel, set in Botswana's famous wildlife paradise, the Okavango Delta and the neighboring country of Namibia, will knock your socks off with breathtaking action. The opening scenes are gripping as the beautiful mercenary Sonja Kurtz attempts to assassinate the president of Zimbabwe. She is betrayed and wounded. She flees to the only home she has ever known, the wildlife park in the now drought stricken Okavango Delta, where she hopes leave her mercenary lifestyle and to rekindle her romance with her childhood boyfriend Stirling Smith who now runs a safari camp.
In the bush, Sonja stumbles across Sam Chapman, the handsome TV wildlife presenter, who has been left alone by his TV crew to film how a bushman can survive in perilous situations surrounded by dangerous animals. Unfortunately his support crew's helicopter crashes and he is starving. There is a wonderful scene where Sonja bullies a cheetah into sharing a bit of his fresh impala kill so they can have food and a most upsetting description of a lion attacking and killing her horse. Sonja uses her bush skills to get them both back to the safety of the camp where she finds her boss, Martin Steele, and perhaps the father of her daughter, Emma, has a new and dangerous job for her.
Given the cold shoulder by Sterling, who has taken up with a much younger woman, Sonja accepts a job guiding the TV crew to film the controversial Namibian dam that is blocking the precious flow of water to the wildlife in the delta region. She has an ulterior motive to spy on the security at the dam because she finally accepts the lucrative assignment, paid for by the desperate safari operators to blow up the dam and release the precious water to arid Botswana.
In the book, Tony Park draws on real life rebellions between African tribes and expected wars caused by water shortages in parched Africa, where there is ongoing conflict between the needs of impoverished humans and the even more valuable wildlife which brings in the tourist dollars. There actually was a plan by the governments of Angola and Namibia to dam the Okavango River. Thankfully the plan was ditched when environmentalists predicted it would destroy the Okavango Delta's fragile ecosystem and kill the wildlife.
Without giving away any of the plots, which twist and turn with such speed the reader will not be able to put the book down, this heroine is such a pistol she completes her task even as she discovers that her team has been compromised. She finds herself growing more attracted to Sam Chapman who turns out to be a cut above the vacuous TV hunk. Even though he is not as tough as Sonja the experienced killer, when the chips are down he is not found wanting. He's not bad as a lover either!
Guest, 25/08/2010
