Title: Black leopard
Description: David Trowbridge is an American field biologist trying to track the elusive leopard in the rain forest. For the site of his investigation, Trowbridge has chosen an embattled wildlife preserve protected by a testy Belgian primatologist deep in the jungle. Under a dense and dripping canopy of trees, Trowbridge needs to dart and collar six leopards - silent and invisible except when they're attacking chimpanzees, and just possibly a human being who gets in the way.

The study is just swinging into gear when three people at the base camp get in the way of something infinitely more vicious than a leopard - something that riddles their bodies with bullets and leaves them to the insects. Trowbridge asks too many questions and is swiftly deported, despite the help of a stunning Lebanese businesswoman.

But his work in Terre Diamantee is just beginning - murderers and moneyboys, poachers and politicos, fetichistes and femmes draw him back into a vortex of danger, back into the darkness of the rain forest itself, where his leopards struggle to survive. And where he must draw on all his resources to escape the rainy season, and the erupting country, with his data and his life.
Subjects: Fiction, Revolutions, Biologists, Americans, New York Times reviewed
Places: Africa, West Africa