Straw Dogs

Olatundes lively imagination and wicked sense of humour maintain suspense and keep the plotline from tiring in this international, supernatural, semi-farcical thriller. Kirkus Reviews



Shola Dina, son of a wealthy Nigerian socialite, is forced to flee from Nigeria to New York after the Abacha regime assassinates his father and threatens his life. As an migr in New York, he struggles to make ends meet. In May 1998, while employed as a waiter at an upscale restaurant, he has a chance encounter with Carol Moore, a notable Hollywood director, who casts him as a lead in her new movie.


Things take an unexpected turn when Moore is murdered in her apartment midway into the movie production after she stumbles upon a telltale video recording of a covert plot to break into the White House to harm President Bill Clinton. Shola is implicated in her murder. The break in is sponsored by the Rose flower Committee, a secret Chinese hard-line communist organization which was founded during Chinas Cultural Revolution by Madame Mao and a young Chinese army officer, Tung Yuk-Kai, who had become a major general by 1998.


Two weeks before China Summit II in June 1998, a Chinese secret agent contracted to execute the break in accidentally plunges to his death from the presidential bedroom of the White House. The Committee feeds American intelligence evidence linking Chinas President, Jiang Zemin, with the botched break in. Intensive investigations are quietly launched separately by the American and Chinese governments. Desperate to cover its tracks, the Rose flower Committee attempts its most daring mission a poison gas attack on a state dinner held in honour of Clinton in Beijing, a dinner scheduled to have Chinas top leaders in attendance.


Straw Dogs is an account of the events surrounding the break in and the bomb plot. The novel has a cast of celebrities, disgruntled angels, secret service agents and members of the American Autosexual Society (AAS), an organisation which defends the rights of autosexuals; autosexual is a term which refers to an individual whose sexual preference is masturbation. The interactions of these odd characters results in a tale that is comic, action-packed and full of suspense.