By David Beckwith, Book Reviewer ,’on the bookshelf,’ The Key West Citizen, July 13-14, 2019

The United Nations Genocide Convention defines the term genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” Whereas most people are familiar with the Holocaust, mass killings are as old man himself – the Armenian Genocide, the Greek Genocide, the Assyrian Genocide, the Indonesian Genocide, the Bangladesh Genocide, etc. – just to cite a few.  The Political Instability Task Force estimates that between 1956 and 2016 alone, 43 genocides took place, killing 50 million people. This is the topic Chuck Van Soye has chosen to address in his latest book, “Ghost of Africa,” the third book in his Bret Lee series.

All in all, it would make an enjoyable summer diversionary read as the reader hopes justice will prevail and that Kunga is going to finally get what he deserves.

David Beckwith, author of “A Ransom Conspiracy

Chuck retired from a career in engineering, sales and marketing and he and his wife became full-time Key West residents. Prior to his retirement, Chuck worked as a McGraw-Hill editor and writer and was DuPont’s founding editor of its “Journal of Teflon.” He has also written both fiction (“Young Again . . . And Again . . . And Again”) and nonfiction (“Pondering Life’s Imponderables”).

“Ghost of Africa” was inspired by the genocidal atrocities committed by Uganda’s Joseph Kony in the 1990’s. In the aftermath of his atrocities, multi-national efforts eroded much of Kony and his LRA’s power, but he was never brought to justice or killed. He simply became a ghost of uncertain whereabouts thought to be operating either in the Congo, the Central African Republic or South Sudan. Van Soye has based his antagonist in this book on Kony and renamed him Jacob Kunga.

Protagonist Bret Lee is a professor at the University of Maryland who has performed stealth missions for the CIA in the past. He now considers himself retired from that sort of work after some close calls on previous missions. As the book opens, this is about to change when he is recruited once again. His mission: to smoke out and eliminate the LRA once and for all.  He is reluctant at first to become involved but reconsiders after he learns that Kunga intends to regain his power and credibility by committing terrorist acts against civilian aircraft with black market Stinger missiles. He decides to pretend to be a black market arms dealer himself, hoping Kunga will attempt to buy the missiles from him. Once he locates Kunga, his final goal is clear – kill the madman. With the help of his wife, Chu, and brother-in-law Zhu, Lee travels the world trying to establish contact with Kunga. He and Zhu often have to improvise their next moves since their plan is flexible and often subject to revision based on evolving circumstances. Meanwhile, Chu is behind the scenes pulling strings and helping make things continue to happen. The book is a fast read and takes the reader to some exotic locations like Monte Carlo, Paris and Macao before Bret and Zhu go to Africa for the final confrontation. All in all, it would make an enjoyable summer diversionary read as the reader hopes justice will prevail and that Kunga is going to finally get what he deserves.

Reviewed by David Beckwith, author of “A Ransom Conspiracy.”