The Final Truth

One man’s lie is another man’s truth…

And this is never more so than in the murky world of African politics, the veritable heart of darkness.

It’s a world that Max Latimer, a one-time Fleet Street reporter now working for the International Criminal Court in The Hague trying to bring genocidal warlords to justice, becomes almost fatally enmeshed in.

His investigative skills are suddenly of interest to a distraught Martha Kibassa, a senior economist at the World Health Organisation whose husband Henry, a prominent African politician, has been brutally murdered in his home, executed, assassinated – with a signature bullet in the ear.

Max’s name was on an envelope in Kabissa’s briefcase which contained a list – the names of people who had disappeared in Zambania, a country now in the grip of President Alphonse Bareto.

The land is of huge interest to the world’s major powers thanks to its treasure-trove of natural resources – and Bareto, an orphaned former refugee, has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in restoring order in the region.

He is about to receive his ward in Oslo.

At the same time, the recent failure to bring about the successful prosecution of a man accused of war crimes in Bosnia and Croatia has left Max’s career in shreds.

But if he can bring Bareto’s hit-squad chief, General Hippolyte Moses, to The Hague as a witness to the ‘executions’ in Zambania, he has the chance to repair the damage.

Max seeks to bring Bareto to justice, but Martha seeks revenge.

What is the real purpose of Martha’s decision to take leave and go on a hunting trip to Norway?

How is Max tangled up in the murder of a prostitute by British Special Forces?

What is so revealing about the way General Moses dispatches a bull elephant which threatens to disrupt the progress of a train during his transit to The Hague?

And what is on a tiny pink memory stick that Bareto so hugely prizes?

The Final Truth  is a political thriller and a smart modern take on classics as diverse as Nine Hours to Rama and Julius Caesar , on the creation of myth and the moral ambivalence of perspective.

Nick Gordon was a deputy editor of The Daily Mail, before heading up a media consortium in East Africa and becoming the journalist who broke news of the Rwanda massacre. He has written two non-fiction books, Ivory Knights, an account of the elephant and the trading of their tusks and bodies, and Murders in the Mist , telling the story of the killing of Dian Fossey.