Black Gold (A Dr. Whyte Adventure, #1) by C.B. Samet

Black Gold by C.B. Samet
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Good characters and bad ones, all doing exciting things!

Emergency room physician, Dr. Lillian Whyte, is on the brink of burnout. Working 80 to 100 hours a week in a busy Atlanta ER, she’s doing all she can to patch up and stabilize patients and move them along to the specialists or surgeons they need. She does not suffer fools gladly, and her brusque, plain-spoken manner hits almost everyone the wrong way. But when her boss “suggests” she join a medical mission to Kenya to refresh and renew her outlook on medicine (and get her med school loans paid off), she accepts.

The small Red Cross clinic at a U.S. military camp in a rural area of Kenya does wonders for Lillian’s heart and soul. The people there need her skills, and the young interns that arrived soon after she did are genuinely benefiting from the experience and her teachings. There is also the intriguing and attractive Harvard-educated interpreter, Sean Perkins, who is on-site to assist her in communicating with her patients.

Sean Perkins, in actual fact, is Sean Jennings, an undercover CIA operative in Kenya searching for an international oil thief known as “Domino” who has eluded authorities for years. He and his organization have hijacked oil tanker truck convoys, even oil tankers on the high seas, stealing the oil and scuttling the ships with all hands still on deck. The only clues to his identity are a vague physical description that is all too easy to disguise and that he is sometimes referred to as “The Frenchman.” Sean is naturally suspicious when a wealthy French vineyard owner arrives at the military camp bearing much-needed medical supplies. But, on the surface, the guy seems legit, and there are thousands of French ex-pats in Africa.

One morning, Sean and Lillian return to the military camp from a medical trip to a native village to find the entire camp has been slaughtered. Sean knows his suspicions about the vineyard owner were correct, and he believes the camp was destroyed because “Domino” thought he’d been identified. Now Sean and Lillian must flee for their lives before they are silenced like the rest of the camp.

Black Gold was an entertaining mystery-thriller, and I would like to read more of Lillian Whyte’s adventures. I empathized with Dr. Whyte’s frustration with some of her patients not doing what they needed to do to maintain their health and just wanting to rely on some ‘miracle pill’ to magically cure what ailed them. She was direct and often rude, but in reality, some people need that. However, her manner extended to her young colleagues, and things were stressful without that attitude. Kudos to the author for setting up where Lillian was mentally and her effect on the people around her.

The novel had a lot of action that kept the plot moving forward. There was quite a bit of exposition at the beginning to set up Lillian’s life and the history of “Domino,” but once things got going, they didn’t let up. I liked that Lillian took things into her own hands to get out of danger, and I liked that she retained her suspicions about Sean and the CIA’s part in what was going down around her. I thought the use of horses was a unique device for this genre and enjoyed her helicopter ride. My only negative was the use of French words and phrases by the French vineyard owner. The author sprinkles them throughout his dialogue, and some are just wrong. I knew what the author was trying to say, and it was annoying when incorrect, but not enough to make me stop reading or enjoying the story.

I picked this book up for a reading challenge: “Read a book with two different colors in the title.” Well, challenge met, and now I have an exciting, new-to-me series to follow. I recommend BLACK GOLD to readers of mystery fiction or thrillers, especially those who like a medical theme in their stories.

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