Bryan Christy

Tom Klay is an investigative journalist for a magazine called The Sovereign, which seems like a fictional version of National Geographic. However, Tom has been living a double life, also working as a CIA asset. On assignment in South Africa where elephants are still being poached for their ivory, Tom and his group come under the gun of a sniper. Tom's friend Bernard is killed and Tom is shot in the shoulder. Tom vows revenge against a terrorist named Botha who he believes is responsible for Bernard's death, but things are not as they seem. The deeper Tom gets into the politics of both his magazine and South Africa, the more he realizes that he knows nothing at all.

In the Company of Killers had a great deal of potential as a revenge tale or story of the little guy defeating the big guy, but instead it devolves into a plot filled with corruption where nobody ever really wins and the world as we know it is doomed. The book jumps from flashback to flash forward to foreshadowing so much that it is tough to identify the key players and the main story line. None of the characters are well developed, and at the same time, are unlikable. Overall, In the Company of Killers could have been an excellent romance, political thriller or action adventure, but ends up being a disappointing jumble, defying description.… (meer)

For most of the book, I thought that I would be giving this five-stars. It is extremely sad -- rare species being captured, and frequently dying in the process, for wealthy people who apparently can't be satisfied with inert status symbols. Apparently, reptile fanciers tend to become very avid, and want the different, the rare, and don't care that they are actually destroying the species they claim to love. Corrupt government officials, or those who just don't take this environmental issues seriously, are happy to help for a few buck. The smugglers, they seem very proud of their ability to ignore laws. I learned a great deal, some of it frustrating. The writing is very vivid, and the people are carefully fleshed out. I would like to have know about what happened to people other than the Van Nostrands. I'd be cheered up to hear that they got stiffer sentences.

So why no 5-stars. By the end of this book, I felt like throwing up. The trivial sentence that Mike Van Nostrand (MVR) got, and the bonhomie that the agents felt for the people they arrested; is this a game? Christy tells us what a great guy Mike Van Nostrand was: giving up the accounting career he wanted to support his family and take care of his old man's illegal reptile business after he was jailed. Making sure that his plea bargain protected his father from prison. I'd be a lot more impressed if MVR had closed down the business after he made lots of money and studied to become an account. MVR lost his reptile license, and Chip Bepler, who had been in the forefront of taking him down, argued that he should get it back. I couldn't believe it! The book leaves us with a hint that MVR is thinking of going back into the lucrative illegal trade. In all, I was left with such a sense of utter futility that I couldn't bear to read the author's afterword.

One of Christy's repeated remarks is that these people are human beings. What is Christy's point? They're human beings, not monsters, as the old saw goes -- if there is some contradiction between being human and behaving monstrously, I don't know what it is.

He reminds me of a former friend who argued that, of course, serial killers are not responsible for their crimes, not doubt they suffered trauma or are mentally ill, and therefore do not deserve to go to jail. She just shook her head sadly when I said that be that as it may, they can't be allowed to keep killing people. She also argued that everyone deserves another chance, no matter what they've done, like serial killing for example, no matter how often they have done it, and no matter how many times they've done it. If other people get hurt when they are given one of their endless chances, well that's just the price we pay. (And people wondered why I don't oppose the death penalty.)

So a very exciting book that left me with a sense of futility.

added 10/14/2021: My sense of futility was apparently prescient. This was on Greater Good's Animal Rescue site: "Court documents explain how Van Nostrand and Strictly Reptiles trafficked hundreds of turtles, selling them in China, Japan and elsewhere, between 2017 and 2019."

https://blog.theanimalrescuesite.greatergood.com/lizard-king/?gg_medium=content&...

Let's hope the courts take it seriously this time.… (meer)