The Outlaw

Born in England in 1976, author Stephen Davies now lives with his wife Charlie as a missionary on the edge of the Sahara Desert in Burkina Faso (BF), formerly Upper Volta. He writes books for children, including the recent boys adventure tale HACKING TIMBUKTU. *** Davies's boys adventure story for 2011 is OUTLAW. Jake Knight, the rather thoughtless 15-year old son of the British Ambassador to BF, finds everything in his English boarding school boring except his smart phone. One of his parkur pranks (he vaults on a dare into a prison yard, but can't vault back out) gets him suspended from Waltham College for four months. So it's off to BF's capital Ouagadougou to rejoin his father, mother and 13-year old sister anti-imperialist rebellious Kirsty better known as Kas. ***Kas is kidnapped and held for ransom in a plot by evil parties in BF out to blame an 18-year old African boy named the Chameleon and to get British Intelligence and the army to blow up the Chameleon and his band of young people ("The Friends of the Poor") who right wrongs in francophone BF and neighboring countries. By the way, Jake was kidnapped as an unplanned afterthought along with his sister, merely because he tried to save her. *** Indeed things go well for the evil plotters, one of whose leaders is BF's top police official. The innocent Friends of the Poor are targeted by Britain for extinction by smart bomb. Meanwhile Jake and Kas work with Jake's ever present smart phone to convince their father the Ambassador that the Robin Hood wannabe Friends of the Poor had nothing to do with the siblings' kidnapping. *** OUTLAW is fast paced, reminiscent of R. Sydney Bowen's 15 boys adventure novels set in World War II involving American teen Dave Dawson flying for the R.A.F. But OUTLAW also becomes notably preachy and persistently strident. OUTLAW excoriates foreign gold extraction companies for taking jobs away from natives. It highlights corruption in the BF government and features a clearly insane MI-6 British Intelligence officer who commits, unchallenged, cold blooded murder of children active in Friends of the Poor because he, like James Bond before him, is "licensed to kill." OUTLAW preaches non-violence and a few other values. *** Read this book for atmospherics of outlaw and ordinary daily life in Burkina Faso and for the ability of young people of different cultures, languages and religions to find common ground. OUTLAW is an average book moving at a faster than average pace. Do not expect rounded three-dimensional characters. -OOO-