African Sky

African Sky by Tony Park

Fiction/Adventure-Thriller/Adult/498 Pages

It's 1943. A WAAF from Kumalo air base, in Rhodesia, has just been found raped and murdered in a disreputable section of the township. Suspicion immediately falls on the local black community. Squadron Leader Paul Bryant, once a pilot in bomber command, but now a man haunted by the war in Europe, begins to investigate.

Policewoman, Pip Lovejoy, fighting the prejudices of her colleagues and her own demons, also sets out to find the killer. She soon discovers that it isn't as cut and dried as it first seems. To begin with, there is more to the relationship between Bryant and the murdered WAAF than he is admitting. Plus she also finds herself falling for him and is torn between her feelings and doing her duty.

What neither Bryant or Pip realise is that they've stumbled into something that could change the outcome of the war.

Review

I get the impression that Tony Park is a bit of a bloke. His books read a bit like the "Boy's Own Adventures" I used to devour as a child: full of derring-do and heroes who win through against all odds. Without fail, these adventures took place in exotic locations around the globe, with none more exotic than the African continent, which is where African Sky is set. Naturally, the major difference is that Tony Park's books are written for an adult audience, and his characters come with more depth as well as being well and truly fallible. Paul Bryant doesn't flow effortlessly from one crisis to the next and finish up how he started: freshly laundered, not even slightly flushed or flustered and not a hair out of place. Nor is the leading lady all sweetness and light, desperately searching for a man to be her protector. However, that being said, the villains are sufficiently villainous and well deserving of our boos and hisses every time they appear on centre stage.

But the dominating presence in this book, which on several occaisions comes close to stealing the scene, is the scenery. This is where Tony Park really shines. It's obvious, even to the most casual observer, that this is a man smitten. His love of the African bushveldt shows in his descriptions. It transports the reader into a world of myriad scents and vibrant colours bounding with life. You can almost smell the rank breath of the leopards; taste the dust kicked up by the passing herd of antelope; feel the violent heaving of the landrover on the track; the blistering heat of the sun. Look up into the piercing blue African sky, and you almost want to squint. This is a man who truly knows the country. Not surprising, really, as he lives there most of the time.

A few weeks ago, I went and saw the latest Disney-Pixar offering, Ratatouille. The background scenery in that movie was of such high standard that it sometimes drew the eye away from the action. The same thing happens in African Sky, giving the book two distinct levels; kind of like watching Bruce Willis running around creating mayhem while Laurence Olivier implacably looks on. It could be that this is a deliberate ploy on the part of the author, in an attempt to graphically display the incosequence of men; that in the end, all our struggles amount to nothing because, when we're long gone, Africa will still be there.

And maybe that's as it should be, but it still doesn't stop me from enjoying those "Boy's Own Adventures".

My Rating: