A Darkening Stain

By Robert Wilson

A stylish, tough and exciting thriller set in West Africa, the fourth in Robert Wilson’s critically acclaimed Bruce Medway series.

Bruce Medway, fixer for the great unfixed, does not see the disappearance of schoolgirls off the rain-shattered streets of Cotonou, Benin, as any of his business. That is the domain of his ex-partner, police detective Bagado, and his corrupt boss Commandant Bondougou. Bruce has the more pressing matter of a visit from two sweet-natured mafiosi, Carlo and his ‘enforcer’ Gio, 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 deeper darkness of police corruption, mafia revenge, sexual depravity, illegally mined gold, and the lonely, privileged but psychotic existence of the Nigerian heiress, Madame Sokode.

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, out on the flat, black waters of the huge lagoon system, will inevitably result in death and destruction. But then innocence has always been the burden of dark experience.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Jul 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9780007393879

Robert Wilson

Robert Wilson was born in 1957. A graduate of Oxford University, he has worked in shipping, advertising and trading in Africa. He has travelled in Asia and Africa and has lived in Greece and West Africa. He is married and writes from an isolated farmhouse in Portugal.

Reviews for A Darkening Stain

[storyjunkie · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very nicely done hard-boiled mystery. Very bloody, and a not-resolved look at the nature of corruption, especially in an essentially broken system of authority. The different plot-lines become connected too easily for my taste, and the consequences of the solutions to all the problems are never discussed, and they would be serious psychological and moral consequences if not legal. Such a denouement would have been a nice, heavy conclusion to the themes of the story.Also, my love for Heike as a (minor, relatively) character knows no bounds.

[gypsysmom_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is the third book by Robert Wilson that I have read, all of them set in West Africa. They are noir, very noir, but I found them mesmerizing.This book, like the others I have read, star Bruce Medway, an Englishman who fetched up in West Africa after travelling across the Sahara Desert and decided to stay. He runs a private investigation and debt collection business out of Cotonou, Benin. His best friend is Bagado, a detective with the Cotonou Surete. He lives with his girlfriend, Heike, a German who works with an NGO helping Africans with AIDS and HIV. Bruce drinks a lot and he does some seedy jobs but at heart he is a decent guy. Heike has just told him she is pregnant and he is pleased but not quite sure how this is going to work out.Bagado summons him to a ship in port where there are 5 dead men in the hold. Bruce figures out that the men died of suffocation due to toxic fumes offgassing from some fresh lumber in the hold where they stowed away. Bagado also tells him about young African schoolgirls that have gone missing and that the Surete Director, Bondougou, won’t let him near the case. Bagado and Bondougou have had issues for many years and Bagado is almost at the end of his rope. He wants Bruce to find out where the young girls are and also help him get rid of Bondougou. Bruce promises to help him any way he can. The problem is that all the ways he can think of get him deeper into trouble with bad guys and with Heike. To me this book felt like a West African version of Die Hard with people being killed in more and more horrific ways. I think I’m glad this is the end of the Bruce Medway series.

[morgannakerrie · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Not one of my favorite Weldon books. It's a story about feminists, and that's all I remember from it.