The Leopard's Prey (Jade del Cameron Series #4)

by Suzanne Arruda

Overview

?A larger-than-life heroine far ahead of her time,?(Denver Post) returns to 1920s Africa, where she meets with an ominous warning?

Jade del Cameron's latest endeavor?helping a company collect wild animals for U.S. zoos? finds her lassoing zebras and posing as bait for a leopard. But the real danger begins when Jade's friends find a merchant's body on their coffee plantation. Authorities determine the cause of death to be murder. Their prime suspect: Jade's beau, moviemaker and World War I flying ace Sam Featherstone.

To clear Sam's name, Jade launches her own investigation, questioning the dead man's partners and clients. But nothing can prepare Jade for the journey that lies ahead, as she must make an emergency landing in Sam's plane deep within the vast African wilderness, then risk the long trek back to Nairobi to confront more than one kind of brutal killer face-to-face?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781440655944
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/06/2009
Series:	Jade del Cameron Series , #4
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	712,180
File size:	502 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Suzanne Arruda, a former zookeeper-turned-science teacher and freelance writer, is the author f several biographies for young adults. She has also published science and nature articles for adults and children and is a regular contributor to a weekly newspaper supplement. An avid hiker and outdoorswoman, she lives in Kansas with her husband, twin sons, and a small menagerie of pets.

Editorial Reviews

Spunky Jade del Cameron, animal wrangler, photojournalist and neophyte pilot, predictably tames man and beast in Arruda's middling fourth mystery set in 1920 Kenya (after 2008's The Serpent's Daughter). When a local merchant's body turns up on a coffee plantation, the authorities deem it a case of murder. The chief suspect is Sam Featherstone, wounded American war hero, now filmmaker and Jade's flying mentor, who torments Jade with that age-old female dilemma, marriage or independence. In between solving crimes and rescuing baby animals, Jade laments the passing of old Africa and promotes nascent African independence. Her charming cheetah, Biscuit, and Jade's indomitable can-do spirit reinforce the author's relish for describing the Kenyan landscape, its animal life and its native Kikuyu and Masai tribesmen, saving this otherwise conventional novel from banality. (Jan.)

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Publishers Weekly

Intrepid journalist and adventuress Jade Del Cameron is in Nairobi, Kenya, helping to capture wild animals for American zoos. When a man's body is found on her friends' coffee plantation, Jade and her boyfriend, movie producer and World War I pilot Sam Featherstone, are the prime suspects. Then someone attacks Sam. Courageous, quick-thinking, straight-talking Jade must find the murderer before more people die. In her fourth mystery set in 1920s East Africa (Mark of the Lion; Stalking Ivory; The Serpent's Daughter), Arruda depicts a world in which encroaching colonial civilization is beginning to cost the wild animals their homes and racial tensions between British settlers and the natives are escalating. Great characters, careful plotting, and an unusually beautiful depiction of Africa make this a good choice for all mystery collections.

—Jo Ann Vicarel

Library Journal

The most dangerous animals in Nairobi circa 1920 are the two-legged kind. After unraveling a kidnapping plot in Morocco (The Serpent's Daughter, 2008, etc.), Jade del Cameron has returned to her beloved Kenya Colony to help friends at the Perkins and Daley Zoological Company rescue wild animals that, if not captured for transfer to zoos, would fall prey to hunters. She's particularly interested in a pair of rare leopards. Jade's attempts to capture the wild cats are immortalized on film by Sam Featherstone, a World War I flying ace turned moviemaker and, not incidentally, Jade's boyfriend. The globetrotting adventuress teases her friend Madeline Thompson about Maddy's overheated but bestselling adventure novels, with titles like Ivory Blood and Stalking Death. The mood turns dark, however, when Sam discovers a corpse in the Thompsons' coffee dryer. The dead man is Martin Stokes, owner of Stokes and Berryhill Store in Nairobi, the very man who sold Maddy and her husband Neville the coffee dryer. Stokes' wife Alice has recently gone missing; an ad placed in the local paper, presumably by Stokes, seeks help in finding her. When Sam is implicated as Stokes' killer, plucky Jade, whose interests include flying airplanes and taking photographs, turns sleuth once more. A dangerous plane crash thickens the plot for the supporting cast of colorful colonials who serve as suspects. A lively mystery adventure with a strong sense of both its historical period and its exotic locale.

Kirkus Reviews