Blood Is Dirt

by Robert Wilson

Published 20 March 1997

The third powerful and evocative novel in Robert Wilson's acclaimed West African-set Bruce Medway series.

Bruce Medway, fixer and debt collector for anyone in a deeper hole than himself, has heard a few stories in his time. The one that Napier Briggs tells him is patchy, but it doesn't exclude the vital fact that two million of his dollars have gone missing. Bruce is used to imperfect information - people get embarrassed at their own stupidity and criminality. But for the first time it leads to the gruesome and brutal death of a client.

It would all have ended there but for Napier's daughter, the sexy, sassy and sussed Selina Aguia, a canny commodities broker. She brings money to the game and launches Bruce into a savage world where a power-hungry Nigerian presidential candidate, a rich blow-loving American and a mafia capo are fighting a silent war in which pawns are badly needed. Worse for Bruce, Selina wants revenge, and with the scam she invents she looks as if she'll get it. This is a world where blood is dirt - nobody really cares. Not even if they love you.


A Darkening Stain

by Robert Wilson

Published 20 April 1998
A stylish, tough and exciting thriller set in West Africa, the fourth in Robert Wilson's critically acclaimed Bruce Medway series: 'Unflinchingly imagined and executed. First in a field of one' -- Literary Review Bruce Medway, fixer for the great unfixed, does not see the disappearance of schoolgirls off the streets of Cotonou as any of his business. That is the domain of his ex-partner, police detective Bagado. Bruce has the more pressing matter of a visit from two mafiosi, employees of the Lagos-based capo, Roberto Franconelli. They want him to find Jean-Luc Marnier, a French businessman, who is definitely in for more than a wrist-slapping. In a night of brutal terror with Marnier, Bruce finds himself with a choice to make, followed by a life-saving lie that has to be told. Both choice and lie will rumble over the rest of his days like the interminable rainy season. Then an eighth and very important schoolgirl goes missing and Bruce must descend into a morass of police corruption, mafia revenge, sexual depravity, and illegally mined gold...To save himself, Bruce has to conceive a plan.
A scam that will excite the natural greed that prevails along this coast and when executed will inevitably result in death and destruction. But then innocence has always been the burden of dark experience.