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A review by komet2020
A Café on the Nile by Bartle Bull
adventurous
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
5.0
A Café on the Nile is the second novel in the Anton Rider series. It brings back to the fore many of the characters from The White Rhino Hotel as well as introduces to the reader, a number of new and emerging characters who make this an epic novel.
The year is 1935. War looms over the horizon in East Africa with Italy poised to invade and conquer Abyssinia (now Ethiopia), thus erasing the shame of its 1896 defeat there by the forces of Emperor Menelik at Adowa. There is a gathering of various personages at the Cataract Café, a swank establishment situated on the Nile in Cairo, owned and operated by the Goian dwarf Olivio Fonseca Alavedo (last seen in The White Rhino Hotel when he worked for an English lord for many years in a hotel in Nairobi). Among them is Anton Rider, a British expatriate and hunter who makes his living from organizing and leading safaris for rich clients; his estranged Welsh wife Gwenn and their 2 young sons; Gwenn's lover Lorenzo Grimaldi, a colonel in Italy's Regia Aeronautica (air force) tasked with helping to ensure a swift triumph for Italian arms in the war soon to come; two wealthy and pampered sisters from the U.S. (both identical twins - Bernadette and Harriet Mills) recently arrived in Egypt with Bernadette's fiance to be part of a safari in Abyssinia led by Rider himself; Lord Penfold, Olivio's former boss who is down on his luck; and Ernst von Decken, an old acquaintance of Rider, who is a gambler with a restless spirit set on making himself rich at the expense of the Italians and so restore for himself a stable, comfortable life he had known before World War I when he lived with his father in what was German East Africa (Tanzania).
What begins as a routine safari for Rider and his party in Abyssinia soon develops into a fight for survival as they find themselves swept up in the chaos created by the Italian invasion. Gwenn, who had been in a relationship with Colonel Grimaldi while studying to be a doctor, has volunteered to be part of a Red Cross medical staff in Abyssinia, whose role was to provide medical services there for its people. So it is that the destinies of Rider, Gwenn, the Mills Twins, Grimaldi, and von Decken are brought together in Abyssinia as that nation struggles to overcome Italian forces set on conquering it, not above using the dropping of poison gas by Italian bombers on civilians as a way of ensuring a swift victory for Mussolini in his quest to establish a Greater Italian East Africa.
Olivio, too, has his own scrapes with tragedy and death as he seeks to build upon the wealth and financial security he has striven for years to establish and maintain for himself and his friends Rider, Gwenn, and Lord Penfold.
While this novel is packed with adventure and excitement, it is not for the squeamish at heart. I was left breathless after reading it. Soon, I'll be off to read the third novel in the series.
The year is 1935. War looms over the horizon in East Africa with Italy poised to invade and conquer Abyssinia (now Ethiopia), thus erasing the shame of its 1896 defeat there by the forces of Emperor Menelik at Adowa. There is a gathering of various personages at the Cataract Café, a swank establishment situated on the Nile in Cairo, owned and operated by the Goian dwarf Olivio Fonseca Alavedo (last seen in The White Rhino Hotel when he worked for an English lord for many years in a hotel in Nairobi). Among them is Anton Rider, a British expatriate and hunter who makes his living from organizing and leading safaris for rich clients; his estranged Welsh wife Gwenn and their 2 young sons; Gwenn's lover Lorenzo Grimaldi, a colonel in Italy's Regia Aeronautica (air force) tasked with helping to ensure a swift triumph for Italian arms in the war soon to come; two wealthy and pampered sisters from the U.S. (both identical twins - Bernadette and Harriet Mills) recently arrived in Egypt with Bernadette's fiance to be part of a safari in Abyssinia led by Rider himself; Lord Penfold, Olivio's former boss who is down on his luck; and Ernst von Decken, an old acquaintance of Rider, who is a gambler with a restless spirit set on making himself rich at the expense of the Italians and so restore for himself a stable, comfortable life he had known before World War I when he lived with his father in what was German East Africa (Tanzania).
What begins as a routine safari for Rider and his party in Abyssinia soon develops into a fight for survival as they find themselves swept up in the chaos created by the Italian invasion. Gwenn, who had been in a relationship with Colonel Grimaldi while studying to be a doctor, has volunteered to be part of a Red Cross medical staff in Abyssinia, whose role was to provide medical services there for its people. So it is that the destinies of Rider, Gwenn, the Mills Twins, Grimaldi, and von Decken are brought together in Abyssinia as that nation struggles to overcome Italian forces set on conquering it, not above using the dropping of poison gas by Italian bombers on civilians as a way of ensuring a swift victory for Mussolini in his quest to establish a Greater Italian East Africa.
Olivio, too, has his own scrapes with tragedy and death as he seeks to build upon the wealth and financial security he has striven for years to establish and maintain for himself and his friends Rider, Gwenn, and Lord Penfold.
While this novel is packed with adventure and excitement, it is not for the squeamish at heart. I was left breathless after reading it. Soon, I'll be off to read the third novel in the series.