AWF opens 2018 with Moss, Olatunde and Sar
Two thriller writers, Todd Moss and Bolaji Olatunde, as well as alternative rock musician, Bem Sar, will be the star attraction at the first Abuja Writers’ Forum Guest Writer Forum for 2018. The event coming up at Nanet Suites, January 27 will have American novelist Moss reading from his thriller novels, the Ryker diplomatic thriller […]
Two thriller writers, Todd Moss and Bolaji Olatunde, as well as alternative rock musician, Bem Sar, will be the star attraction at the first Abuja Writers’ Forum Guest Writer Forum for 2018.
The event coming up at Nanet Suites, January 27 will have American novelist Moss reading from his thriller novels, the Ryker diplomatic thriller series for Penguin’s Putnam Books, drawing on his real-world experiences inside the U.S. Government.
Moss served as U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs under Secretary Condoleezza Rice and is currently Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington DC and a non-resident scholar at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He holds a PhD from the University of London and a BA from Tufts University.
His latest novel, The Shadow List centres around Judd Ryker who is reassigned following the disappearance of a young American banker in London, sending Ryker into the heart of a corruption scandal in Nigeria, while at the same time his CIA agent wife Jessica is chasing a Russian master criminal known as the Bear.
Unknown to either of them, they are pulling at two ends of the same lethal thread, a staggeringly vicious enterprise of piracy, extortion, and murder. The world is messy and dangerous, Jessica warns her husband. More dangerous than you know. And Judd is about to find out.
Saturday’s event will also feature Bolaji Olatunde, novelist and playwright, whose second novel, Hang No Clothes Here, follows his debut, Straw Dogs. It is published under the Origami imprint of Parresia Publishers, Lagos.
Set in 2011, it is the story of a Nigerian policeman, John Braimoh, who gets thrown, unwittingly, into a turf war between two international drug cartels, battling to maintain footholds in Nigeria for trading narcotics to Europe and the unlikely hero that rose to stop them.
Bem Sar, a musician on the other hand, has had a diverse musical career spanning over two decades. With a wide range of influences, from Stevie Wonder, Prince, and Fred Hammond to alternative artists like John butler, Jon Gomm and Pierre Bensusan, Bem has become known for his audacious blend of alternative rock with RnB, jazz and gospel.