Thriller set in East Africa, India, and London

23rd July 2018

Grave Island by Andrew Smyth – thriller set in East Africa, India, and London.

Grave Island is, in its own right, a well written and exciting thriller. Philip Hennessy is an army intelligence officer. He returns from Afghanistan to a desk job in London – is framed for removing Top Secret files from the office (something he did not do) – and is drummed out of the service. He squats (with permission) on a run down barge on the Thames. His ex-wife introduces him to Greta, who suspects her father was murdered whilst recovering from an operation in a private hospital. Philip, with time on his hands, is persuaded to investigate. His enquiries lead him to a major conspiracy in the manufacture and distribution of counterfeit medicines. He uses his unofficial ties with the secret service to follow the trail of the counterfeiters to East Africa, Zanzibar, and India. Philip is engaged in a race against time to prevent the distribution of useless vaccines to villages across Africa – vaccines that could not only not protect, but could also kill. The book is well paced and dramatic.

Grave Island is, though, also a great deal more than just a well written and exciting thriller. It remind me a little of the Claymore Straker series by Paul E Hardisty. Paul’s books are vehicles to educate us to understand certain environmental, business, or political issues. But we are not preached at… the learning comes from reading excellent stories. And Andrew Smyth employs many of the same techniques in Grave Island. We learn a great deal about the manufacture and distribution of counterfeit medicines. The global pharmaceutical business is incredibly complicated. Different pricing structures in different countries lead to the quite legal purchase of a drug in one country to be relabelled and sold on in another. These practices, and the environment in which they operate, lead to multiple opportunities for the counterfeiters. India has become a centre for low cost production of both genuine and counterfeit product.

The extent of the problem is quite staggering. At a recent conference in London, estimates made by the World Health Organisation (WHO) suggest that one in ten drugs sold in Africa are “falsified or substandard”, and result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands annually. Up to 72,000 deaths from childhood pneumonia can be attributed to substandard or fake drugs, while ineffective antimalarials kill over 100,000. These casualty rates are much greater than those for illegal drugs (such as heroin). They put illegal drug use into perspective.

Grave Island is both a really good thriller and a very thought provoking book.

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