Act of Faith

In 1963 the African country of Burundi would have been unimportant if United Nations troops hadn't been fighting a major war next door in the Congo. But they were. In a small market town near the border, on the night after an ambush on a truck convoy interrupts the honeymoon photo safari of Thomas Andrew Curry and Sandrine Cadette Curry, a man jumps from a second-story hotel window shortly after a shot is heard in the room. No one else goes into the room or comes out of it in the few minutes before soldiers break down its locked door to find a dead body. The fleeing guest looks like easy gallows bait to the combat officer whose troops quickly capture him.

But he swears to Thomas and Sandy that he's innocent. Even more intriguingly, the investigating juge d'instruction, Michel Mboya, also seems to think that things aren't quite as simple as they appear to the soldiers (and to everyone else, for that matter). Mboya also seems to think that much more than the risk of executing an innocent man is at stake - and if moral suasion doesn't work, he can pressure Thomas and Sandy in much more concrete ways to help him with an investigation that will fail if does things by the book. Along with Thomas's mentor, international lawyer Theodore Furst, Thomas and Sandy will find themselves reluctantly involved in fights with everything from fists to improvised swords, negotiations with gun-runners, temper tantrums thrown by junior diplomats, and a taut courtroom drama featuring a photograph that isn't what it seems. But then, in this locked room mystery about a murder in the remotest backwaters of Cold War conflict, nothing is quite what it seems.


Genre: Mystery