SAVANNAH BLUE

by William Harrison ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 4, 1980

Mass murder and purple patches notwithstanding, this is relatively restrained, surprisingly appealing work from the sometimes lurid and extravagant author of Africana, Roller Ball Murder, etc. Professor Charles J. Haze, a 60-year-old African history teacher and special CIA contract agent, is a graying womanizer who cleans his teeth with Comet cleanser. He and Sidney Cash, second in command of the Washington Branch of Interpol, are called in by roly-poly gourmand Peter Foxx (Little Buddha) of the Treasury Department and assigned to a new undercover Task Force code-named Savannah Blue: some mysterious African terrorist is murdering visiting US businessmen with cobra venom, and Haze & Cash must stop him. Meanwhile, Harrison introduces us to the killer himself: he's Britisher Quentin Clare, who lives on a cobra farm outside Nairobi; his doctor father has been in a 20-year coma resulting from snakebite, his mother died 25 years ago of a flu strain brought into Nairobi by a US businessman, and Quentin feels he must kill all US businessmen in Africa--to prevent the rape of African culture and to have ""a soul adventure, a purpose so serious, a risk so lonely and dreadful and primitive, that he could finally know himself in a spiritual ecstasy."" Half-crazed with loneliness, Quentin distills a super-powerful venom which kills almost instantly when squirted onto victims from his squirt-ring, which can kill at seven feet. So: extensive cat-and-mousery ensues--as Quentin is tracked all over Africa by the task force and drawn out of hiding by various ruses, which he surmounts, until Haze lures him into a trap in D.C. . . . . Yes, another rather overripe Harrison plot--but this time the African local color is not laid on with a trowel, and the characters are more sympathetic than usual. Textured melodrama with wider audience potential than most of Harrison's previous fandangos.

Pub Date: Feb. 4, 1980

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Marek--dist. by Putnam

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1980

Categories: FICTION