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THE HORNS AND THE BEAST A thriller smelling of the raw African bush, and clashing with the brutal world of international organised crime. It’s permeated with beasts, poachers, mysteries, riddles, chases and revelations. The well-crafted plot keeps the reader hooked in this provocative and gripping read. |
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The Horns and the Beast deals with the high-stakes criminal world involved in the illegal rhino horn trade. It covers the field from its source in the dusty bushveld of Africa, where rhinos are systematically hunted down by poachers with machine guns and their horns hacked off, to the end of the dealing chain in the sweltering alleys of Hong Kong riddled with the ruthless Chinese Triads. One man in particular has become a kingpin in this black-market trade, and upped the stakes by transforming rhino horns into a valuable personal resource to ensure the survival of his criminal empire. His greed is driven by his paranoia of being controlled, and by his conspiracy theories of the Beast and the advent of the apocalypse as foretold in the biblical book of Revelation. He also reveals a terrible and fascinating secret about his past. Rhino horns have been in the news lately. One example is the brazen daylight theft of a horn from a stuffed rhino in the Pretoria Museum. Of course, Rhino horns aren’t only being stolen from collections. The high prices the horns fetch on the black market has fired off systematic and wide-spread poaching that is threatening to drive the rhinos species to extinction, sooner rather than later. Rhino horns fetch huge prices in the black-market, and dealing in them is illegal in most countries. Current estimates put the price at over US$ 60,000 per kilogram, putting it in the similar lucrative scale as the illicit drug trade, illegal diamond trade and human trafficking. Most people have heard of the supposed aphrodisiacal properties of rhino horn powder. That’s only the sensational aspect, as it has many other supposed attributes and uses. In the Far East it is still used for many traditional medicines, for instance to cure headaches, impotency, and other complaints. It also has a large market for the manufacture of ornaments and for making the hilts of Jambiyyas, the prized Yemeni daggers traditionally worn by Arab men. With the increase in wealth in these countries, especially China, the demand has escalated astronomically. |
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© 2009 Charles Oak | by: Fonkas Studios |
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